the red pyramid
by The heir of chaos
Summary: this is based on rick's original . all characters belong to rick.
1. Chapter 1

R

**1. A Death at the Needle**

WE ONLY HAVE A FEW HOURS, so listen carefully.

If you're hearing this story, you're already in danger. Sadie and I might be your only chance.

Go to the school. Find the locker. I won't tell you which school or which locker, because if you're the right person, you'll find it. The combination is 13/32/33. By the time you finish listening, you'll know what those numbers mean. Just remember the story we're about to tell you isn't complete yet. How it ends will depend on you.

The most important thing: when you open the package and find what's inside, don't keep it longer than a week. Sure, it'll be tempting. I mean, it will grant you almost unlimited power. But if you possess it too long, it will consume you. Learn its secrets quickly and pass it on. Hide it for the next person, the way Sadie and I did for you. Then be prepared for your life to get very interesting.

Okay, Sadie is telling me to stop stalling and get on with the story. Fine. I guess it started in London, the night our dad blew up the British Museum.

My name is Carter Kane. I'm fourteen and my home is a suitcase.

You think I'm kidding? Since I was eight years old, my dad and I have traveled the world. I was born in L.A. but my dad's an archaeologist, so his work takes him all over. Mostly we go to Egypt, since that's his specialty. Go into a bookstore, find a book about Egypt, there's a pretty good chance it was written by Dr. Julius Kane. You want to know how Egyptians pulled the brains out of mummies, or built the pyramids, or cursed King Tut's tomb? My dad is your man. Of course, there are other reasons my dad moved around so much, but I didn't know his secret back then.

I didn't go to school. My dad homeschooled me, if you can call it "home" schooling when you don't have a home. He sort of taught me whatever he thought was important, so I learned a lot about Egypt and basketball stats and my dad's favorite musicians. I read a lot, too—pretty much anything I could get my hands on, from dad's history books to fantasy novels—because I spent a lot of time sitting around in hotels and airports and dig sites in foreign countries where I didn't know anybody. My dad was always telling me to put the book down and play some ball. You ever try to start a game of pick-up basketball in Aswan, Egypt? It's not easy.

Anyway, my dad trained me early to keep all my possessions in a single suitcase that fits in an airplane's overhead compartment. My dad packed the same way, except he was allowed an extra workbag for his archaeology tools. Rule number one: I was not allowed to look in his workbag. That's a rule I never broke until the day of the explosion.

It happened on Christmas Eve. We were in London for visitation day with my sister, Sadie.

See, Dad's only allowed two days a year with her—one in the winter, one in the summer—because our grandparents hate him. After our mom died, her parents (our grandparents) had this big court battle with Dad. After six lawyers, two fistfights, and a near fatal attack with a spatula (don't ask), they won the right to keep Sadie with them in England. She was only six, two years younger than me, and they couldn't keep us both—at least that was their excuse for not taking me. So Sadie was raised as a British schoolkid, and I traveled around with my dad. We only saw Sadie twice a year, which was fine with me.

[Shut up, Sadie. Yes—I'm getting to that part.]

So anyway, my dad and I had just flown into Heathrow after a couple of delays. It was a drizzly, cold afternoon. The whole taxi ride into the city, my dad seemed kind of nervous.

Now, my dad is a big guy. You wouldn't think anything could make him nervous. He has dark brown skin like mine, piercing brown eyes, a bald head, and a goatee, so he looks like a buff evil scientist. That afternoon he wore his cashmere winter coat and his best brown suit, the one he used for public lectures. Usually he exudes so much confidence that he dominates any room he walks into, but sometimes—like that afternoon—I saw another side to him that I didn't really understand. He kept looking over his shoulder like we were being hunted.

"Dad?" I said as we were getting off the A-40. "What's wrong?"

"No sign of them," he muttered. Then he must've realized he'd spoken aloud, because he looked at me kind of startled. "Nothing, Carter. Everything's fine."

Which bothered me because my dad's a terrible liar. I always knew when he was hiding something, but I also knew no amount of pestering would get the truth out of him. He was probably trying to protect me, though from what I didn't know. Sometimes I wondered if he had some dark secret in his past, some old enemy following him, maybe; but the idea seemed ridiculous. Dad was just an archaeologist.

The other thing that troubled me: Dad was clutching his workbag. Usually when he does that, it means we're in danger. Like the time gunmen stormed our hotel in Cairo. I heard shots coming from the lobby and ran downstairs to check on my dad. By the time I got there, he was just calmly zipping up his workbag while three unconscious gunmen hung by their feet from the chandelier, their robes falling over their heads so you could see their boxer shorts. Dad claimed not to have witnessed anything, and in the end the police blamed a freak chandelier malfunction.

Another time, we got caught in a riot in Paris. My dad found the nearest parked car, pushed me into the backseat, and told me to stay down. I pressed myself against the floorboards and kept my eyes shut tight. I could hear Dad in the driver's seat, rummaging in his bag, mumbling something to himself while the mob yelled and destroyed things outside. A few minutes later he told me it was safe to get up. Every other car on the block had been overturned and set on fire. Our car had been freshly washed and polished, and several twenty-euro notes had been tucked under the windshield wipers.

Anyway, I'd come to respect the bag. It was our good luck charm. But when my dad kept it close, it meant we were going to need good luck.

We drove through the city center, heading east toward my grandparents' flat. We passed the golden gates of Buckingham Palace, the big stone column in Trafalgar Square. London is a pretty cool place, but after you've traveled for so long, all cities start to blend together. Other kids I meet sometimes say, "Wow, you're so lucky you get to travel so much." But it's not like we spend our time sightseeing or have a lot of money to travel in style. We've stayed in some pretty rough places, and we hardly ever stay anywhere longer than a few days. Most of the time it feels like we're fugitives rather than tourists.

I mean, you wouldn't think my dad's work was dangerous. He does lectures on topics like "Can Egyptian Magic Really Kill You?" and "Favorite Punishments in the Egyptian Underworld" and other stuff most people wouldn't care about. But like I said, there's that other side to him. He's always very cautious, checking every hotel room before he lets me walk into it. He'll dart into a museum to see some artifacts, take a few notes, and rush out again like he's afraid to be caught on the security cameras.

One time when I was younger, we raced across the Charles de Gaulle airport to catch a last-minute flight, and Dad didn't relax until the plane was off the ground, I asked him point blank what he was running from, and he looked at me like I'd just pulled the pin out of a grenade. For a second I was scared he might actually tell me the truth. Then he said, "Carter, it's nothing." As if "nothing" were the most terrible thing in the world.

After that, I decided maybe it was better not to ask questions.

My grandparents, the Fausts, live in a housing development near Canary Wharf, right on the banks of the River Thames. The taxi let us off at the curb, and my dad asked the driver to wait.

We were halfway up the walk when Dad froze. He turned and looked behind us.

"What?" I asked.

Then I saw the man in the trench coat. He was across the street, leaning against a big dead tree. He was barrel shaped, with skin the color of roasted coffee. His coat and black pinstriped suit looked expensive. He had long braided hair and wore a black fedora pulled down low over his dark round glasses. He reminded me of a jazz musician, the kind my dad would always drag me to see in concert. Even though I couldn't see his eyes, I got the impression he was watching us. He might've been an old friend or colleague of Dad's. No matter where we went, Dad was always running into people he knew. But it did seem strange that the guy was waiting here, outside my grandparents'. And he didn't look happy.

"Carter," my dad said, "go on ahead."

"But—"

"Get your sister. I'll meet you back at the taxi."

He crossed the street toward the man in the trench coat, which left me with two choices: follow my dad and see what was going on, or do what I was told.

I decided on the slightly less dangerous path. I went to retrieve my sister.

Before I could even knock, Sadie opened the door.

"Late as usual," she said.

She was holding her cat, Muffin, who'd been a "going away" gift from Dad six years before. Muffin never seemed to get older or bigger. She had fuzzy yellow-and-black fur like a miniature leopard, alert yellow eyes, and pointy ears that were too tall for her head. A silver Egyptian pendant dangled from her collar. She didn't look anything like a muffin, but Sadie had been little when she named her, so I guess you have to cut her some slack.

Sadie hadn't changed much either since last summer.

[As I'm recording this, she's standing next to me, glaring, so I'd better be careful how I describe her.]

You would never guess she's my sister. First of all, she'd been living in England so long, she has a British accent. Second, she takes after our mom, who was white, so Sadie's skin is much lighter than mine. She has straight caramel-colored hair, not exactly blond but not brown, which she usually dyes with streaks of bright colors. That day it had red streaks down the left side. Her eyes are blue. I'm serious. Blue eyes, just like our mom's. She's only twelve, but she's exactly as tall as me, which is really annoying. She was chewing gum as usual, dressed for her day out with Dad in battered jeans, a leather jacket, and combat boots, like she was going to a concert and was hoping to stomp on some people. She had headphones dangling around her neck in case we bored her.

[Okay, she didn't hit me, so I guess I did an okay job of describing her.]

"Our plane was late," I told her.

She popped a bubble, rubbed Muffin's head, and tossed the cat inside. "Gran, going out!"

From somewhere in the house, Grandma Faust said something I couldn't make out, probably "Don't let them in!"

Sadie closed the door and regarded me as if I were a dead mouse her cat had just dragged in. "So, here you are again."

"Yep."

"Come on, then." She sighed. "Let's get on with it."

That's the way she was. No "Hi, how you been the last six months? So glad to see you!" or anything. But that was okay with me. When you only see each other twice a year, it's like you're distant cousins rather than siblings. We had absolutely nothing in common except our parents.

We trudged down the steps. I was thinking how she smelled like a combination of old people's house and bubble gum when she stopped so abruptly, I ran into her.

"Who's that?" she asked.

I'd almost forgotten about the dude in the trench coat. He and my dad were standing across the street next to the big tree, having what looked like a serious argument. Dad's back was turned so I couldn't see his face, but he gestured with his hands like he does when he's agitated. The other guy scowled and shook his head.

"Dunno," I said. "He was there when we pulled up."

"He looks familiar." Sadie frowned like she was trying to remember. "Come on."

"Dad wants us to wait in the cab," I said, even though I knew it was no use. Sadie was already on the move.

Instead of going straight across the street, she dashed up the sidewalk for half a block, ducking behind cars, then crossed to the opposite side and crouched under a low stone wall. She started sneaking toward our dad. I didn't have much choice but to follow her example, even though it made me feel kind of stupid.

"Six years in England," I muttered, "and she thinks she's James Bond."

Sadie swatted me without looking back and kept creeping forward.

A couple more steps and we were right behind the big dead tree. I could hear my dad on the other side, saying, "—have to, Amos. You know it's the right thing."

"No," said the other man, who must've been Amos. His voice was deep and even—very insistent. His accent was American. "If I don't stop you, Julius, they will. The Per Ankh is shadowing you."

Sadie turned to me and mouthed the words "Per what?"

I shook my head, just as mystified. "Let's get out of here," I whispered, because I figured we'd be spotted any minute and get in serious trouble. Sadie, of course, ignored me.

"They don't know my plan," my father was saying. "By the time they figure it out—"

"And the children?" Amos asked. The hairs stood up on the back of my neck. "What about them?"

"I've made arrangements to protect them," my dad said. "Besides, if I don't do this, we're all in danger. Now, back off."

"I can't, Julius."

"Then it's a duel you want?" Dad's tone turned deadly serious. "You never could beat me, Amos."

I hadn't seen my dad get violent since the Great Spatula Incident, and I wasn't anxious to see a repeat of that, but the two men seemed to be edging toward a fight.

Before I could react, Sadie popped up and shouted, "Dad!"

He looked surprised when she tackle-hugged him, but not nearly as surprised as the other guy, Amos. He backed up so quickly, he tripped over his own trench coat.

He'd taken off his glasses. I couldn't help thinking that Sadie was right. He did look familiar—like a very distant memory.

"I—I must be going," he said. He straightened his fedora and lumbered down the road.

Our dad watched him go. He kept one arm protectively around Sadie and one hand inside the workbag slung over his shoulder. Finally, when Amos disappeared around the corner, Dad relaxed. He took his hand out of the bag and smiled at Sadie. "Hello, sweetheart."

Sadie pushed away from him and crossed her arms. "Oh, now it's sweetheart, is it? You're late. Visitation Day's nearly over! And what was that about? Who's Amos, and what's the Per Ankh?"

Dad stiffened. He glanced at me like he was wondering how much we'd overheard.

"It's nothing," he said, trying to sound upbeat. "I have a wonderful evening planned. Who'd like a private tour of the British Museum?"

Sadie slumped in the back of the taxi between Dad and me.

"I can't believe it," she grumbled. "One evening together, and you want to do research."

Dad tried for a smile. "Sweetheart, it'll be fun. The curator of the Egyptian collection personally invited—"

"Right, big surprise." Sadie blew a strand of red-streaked hair out of her face. "Christmas Eve, and we're going to see some moldy old relics from Egypt. Do you ever think about anything else?"

Dad didn't get mad. He never gets mad at Sadie. He just stared out the window at the darkening sky and the rain.

"Yes," he said quietly. "I do."

Whenever Dad got quiet like that and stared off into nowhere, I knew he was thinking about our mom. The last few months, it had been happening a lot. I'd walk into our hotel room and find him with his cell phone in his hands, Mom's picture smiling up at him from the screen—her hair tucked under a headscarf, her blue eyes startlingly bright against the desert backdrop.

Or we'd be at some dig site. I'd see Dad staring at the horizon, and I'd know he was remembering how he'd met her—two young scientists in the Valley of the Kings, on a dig to discover a lost tomb. Dad was an Egyptologist. Mom was an anthropologist looking for ancient DNA. He'd told me the story a thousand times.

Our taxi snaked its way along the banks of the Thames. Just past Waterloo Bridge, my dad tensed.

"Driver," he said. "Stop here a moment."

The cabbie pulled over on the Victoria Embankment.

"What is it, Dad?" I asked.

He got out of the cab like he hadn't heard me. When Sadie and I joined him on the sidewalk, he was staring up at Cleopatra's Needle.

In case you've never seen it: the Needle is an obelisk, not a needle, and it doesn't have anything to do with Cleopatra. I guess the British just thought the name sounded cool when they brought it to London. It's about seventy feet tall, which would've been really impressive back in Ancient Egypt, but on the Thames, with all the tall buildings around, it looks small and sad. You could drive right by it and not even realize you'd just passed something that was a thousand years older than the city of London.

"God." Sadie walked around in a frustrated circle. "Do we have to stop for every monument?"

My dad stared at the top of the obelisk. "I had to see it again," he murmured. "Where it happened..."

A freezing wind blew off the river. I wanted to get back in the cab, but my dad was really starting to worry me. I'd never seen him so distracted.

"What, Dad?" I asked. "What happened here?"

"The last place I saw her."

Sadie stopped pacing. She scowled at me uncertainly, then back at Dad. "Hang on. Do you mean Mum?"

Dad brushed Sadie's hair behind her ear, and she was so surprised, she didn't even push him away.

I felt like the rain had frozen me solid. Mom's death had always been a forbidden subject. I knew she'd died in an accident in London. I knew my grandparents blamed my dad. But no one would ever tell us the details. I'd given up asking my dad, partly because it made him so sad, partly because he absolutely refused to tell me anything. "When you're older" was all he would say, which was the most frustrating response ever.

"You're telling us she died here," I said. "At Cleopatra's Needle? What happened?"

He lowered his head.

"Dad!" Sadie protested. "I go past this every day, and you mean to say—all this time—and I didn't even know?"

"Do you still have your cat?" Dad asked her, which seemed like a really stupid question.

"Of course I've still got the cat!" she said. "What does that have to do with anything?"

"And your amulet?"

Sadie's hand went to her neck. When we were little, right before Sadie went to live with our grandparents, Dad had given us both Egyptian amulets. Mine was an Eye of Horus, which was a popular protection symbol in Ancient Egypt.


	2. Chapter 2

R

**2. An Explosion for Christmas**

I'D BEEN TO THE BRITISH MUSEM BEFORE. In fact I've been in more museums than I like to admit—it makes me sound like a total geek.

[That's Sadie in the background, yelling that I am a total geek. Thanks, Sis.]

Anyway, the museum was closed and completely dark, but the curator and two security guards were waiting for us on the front steps.

"Dr. Kane!" The curator was a greasy little dude in a cheap suit. I'd seen mummies with more hair and better teeth. He shook my dad's hand like he was meeting a rock star. "Your last paper on Imhotep—brilliant! I don't know how you translated those spells!"

"Im-ho-who?" Sadie muttered to me.

"Imhotep," I said. "High priest, architect. Some say he was a magician. Designed the first step pyramid. You know."

"Don't know," Sadie said. "Don't care. But thanks."

Dad expressed his gratitude to the curator for hosting us on a holiday. Then he put his hand on my shoulder. "Dr. Martin, I'd like you to meet Carter and Sadie."

"Ah! Your son, obviously, and—" The curator looked hesitantly at Sadie. "And this young lady?"

"My daughter," Dad said.

Dr. Martin's stare went temporarily blank. Doesn't matter how open-minded or polite people think they are, there's always that moment of confusion that flashes across their faces when they realize Sadie is part of our family. I hate it, but over the years I've come to expect it.

The curator regained his smile. "Yes, yes, of course. Right this way, Dr. Kane. We're very honored!"

The security guards locked the doors behind us. They took our luggage, then one of them reached for Dad's workbag.

"Ah, no," Dad said with a tight smile. "I'll keep this one."

The guards stayed in the foyer as we followed the curator into the Great Court. It was ominous at night. Dim light from the glass-domed ceiling cast crosshatched shadows across the walls like a giant spiderweb. Our footsteps clicked on the white marble floor.

"So," Dad said, "the stone."

"Yes!" the curator said. "Though I can't imagine what new information you could glean from it. It's been studied to death—our most famous artifact, of course."

"Of course," Dad said. "But you may be surprised."

"What's he on about now?" Sadie whispered to me.

I didn't answer. I had a sneaking suspicion what stone they were talking about, but I couldn't figure out why Dad would drag us out on Christmas Eve to see it.

I wondered what he'd been about to tell us at Cleopatra's Needle—something about our mother and the night she died. And why did he keep glancing around as if he expected those strange people we'd seen at the Needle to pop up again? We were locked in a museum surrounded by guards and high-tech security. Nobody could bother us in here—I hoped.

We turned left into the Egyptian wing. The walls were lined with massive statues of the pharaohs and gods, but my dad bypassed them all and went straight for the main attraction in the middle of the room.

"Beautiful," my father murmured. "And it's not a replica?"

"No, no," the curator promised. "We don't always keep the actual stone on display, but for you—this is quite real."

We were staring at a slab of dark gray rock about three feet tall and two feet wide. It sat on a pedestal, encased in a glass box. The flat surface of the stone was chiseled with three distinct bands of writing. The top part was Ancient Egyptian picture writing: hieroglyphics. The middle section...I had to rack my brain to remember what my dad called it: Demotic, a kind of writing from the period when the Greeks controlled Egypt and a lot of Greek words got mixed into Egyptian. The last lines were in Greek.

"The Rosetta Stone," I said.

"Isn't that a computer program?" Sadie asked.

I wanted to tell her how stupid she was, but the curator cut me off with a nervous laugh. "Young lady, the Rosetta Stone was the key to deciphering hieroglyphics! It was discovered by Napoleon's army in 1799 and—"

"Oh, right," Sadie said. "I remember now."

I knew she was just saying that to shut him up, but my dad wouldn't let it go.

"Sadie," he said, "until this stone was discovered, regular mortals...er, I mean, no one had been able to read hieroglyphics for centuries. The written language of Egypt had been completely forgotten. Then an Englishman named Thomas Young proved that the Rosetta Stone's three languages all conveyed the same message. A Frenchman named Champollion took up the work and cracked the code of hieroglyphics."

Sadie chewed her gum, unimpressed. "What's it say, then?"

Dad shrugged. "Nothing important. It's basically a thank-you letter from some priests to King Ptolemy V. When it was first carved, the stone was no big deal. But over the centuries...over the centuries it has become a powerful symbol. Perhaps the most important connection between Ancient Egypt and the modern world. I was a fool not to realize its potential sooner."

He'd lost me, and apparently the curator too.

"Dr. Kane?" he asked. "Are you quite all right?"

Dad breathed deeply. "My apologies, Dr. Martin. I was just...thinking aloud. If I could have the glass removed? And if you could bring me the papers I asked for from your archives."

Dr. Martin nodded. He pressed a code into a small remote control, and the front of the glass box clicked open.

"It will take a few minutes to retrieve the notes," Dr. Martin said. "For anyone else, I would hesitate to grant unguarded access to the stone, as you've requested. I trust you'll be careful."

He glanced at us kids like we were troublemakers.

"We'll be careful," Dad promised.

As soon as Dr. Martin's steps receded, Dad turned to us with a frantic look in his eyes. "Children, this is very important. You have to stay out of this room."

He slipped his workbag off his shoulder and unzipped it just enough to pull out a bike chain and padlock. "Follow Dr. Martin. You'll find his office at the end of the Great Court on the left. There's only one entrance. Once he's inside, wrap this around the door handles and lock it tight. We need to delay him."

"You want us to lock him in?" Sadie asked, suddenly interested. "Brilliant!"

"Dad," I said, "what's going on?"

"We don't have time for explanations," he said. "This will be our only chance. They're coming."

"Who's coming?" Sadie asked.

He took Sadie by the shoulders. "Sweetheart, I love you. And I'm sorry...I'm sorry for many things, but there's no time now. If this works, I promise I'll make everything better for all of us. Carter, you're my brave man. You have to trust me. Remember, lock up Dr. Martin. Then stay out of this room!"

Chaining the curator's door was easy. But as soon as we'd finished, we looked back the way we'd come and saw blue light streaming from the Egyptian gallery, as if our dad had installed a giant glowing aquarium.

Sadie locked eyes with me. "Honestly, do you have any idea what he's up to?"

"None," I said. "But he's been acting strange lately. Thinking a lot about Mom. He keeps her picture..."

I didn't want to say more. Fortunately Sadie nodded like she understood.

"What's in his workbag?" she asked.

"I don't know. He told me never to look."

Sadie raised an eyebrow. "And you never did? God, that is so like you, Carter. You're hopeless."

I wanted to defend myself, but just then a tremor shook the floor.

Startled, Sadie grabbed my arm. "He told us to stay put. I suppose you're going to follow that order too?"

Actually, that order was sounding pretty good to me, but Sadie sprinted down the hall, and after a moment's hesitation, I ran after her.

When we reached the entrance of the Egyptian gallery, we stopped dead in our tracks. Our dad stood in front of the Rosetta Stone with his back to us. A blue circle glowed on the floor around him, as if someone had switched on hidden neon tubes in the floor.

My dad had thrown off his overcoat. His workbag lay open at his feet, revealing a wooden box about two feet long, painted with Egyptian images.

"What's he holding?" Sadie whispered to me. "Is that a boomerang?"

Sure enough, when Dad raised his hand, he was brandishing a curved white stick. It did look like a boomerang. But instead of throwing the stick, he touched it to the Rosetta Stone. Sadie caught her breath. Dad was writing on the stone. Wherever the boomerang made contact, glowing blue lines appeared on the granite. Hieroglyphs.

It made no sense. How could he write glowing words with a stick? But the image was bright and clear: ram's horns above a box and an X.

"Open," Sadie murmured. I stared at her, because it sounded like she had just translated the word, but that was impossible. I'd been hanging around Dad for years, and even I could read only a few hieroglyphs. They are seriously hard to learn.

Dad raised his arms. He chanted: "Wo-seer, i-ei." And two more hieroglyphic symbols burned blue against the surface of the Rosetta Stone.

As stunned as I was, I recognized the first symbol. It was the name of the Egyptian god of the dead.

"Wo-seer," I whispered. I'd never heard it pronounced that way, but I knew what it meant. "Osiris."

"Osiris, come," Sadie said, as if in a trance. Then her eyes widened. "No!" she shouted. "Dad, no!"

Our father turned in surprise. He started to say, "Children—" but it was too late. The ground rumbled. The blue light turned to searing white, and the Rosetta Stone exploded.

When I regained consciousness, the first thing I heard was laughter—horrible, gleeful laughter mixed with the blare of the museum's security alarms.

I felt like I'd just been run over by a tractor. I sat up, dazed, and spit a piece of Rosetta Stone out of my mouth. The gallery was in ruins. Waves of fire rippled in pools along the floor. Giant statues had toppled. Sarcophagi had been knocked off their pedestals. Pieces of the Rosetta Stone had exploded outward with such force that they'd embedded themselves in the columns, the walls, the other exhibits.

Sadie was passed out next to me, but she looked unharmed. I shook her shoulder, and she grunted. "Ugh."

In front of us, where the Rosetta Stone had been, stood a smoking, sheared-off pedestal. The floor was blackened in a starburst pattern, except for the glowing blue circle around our father.

He was facing our direction, but he didn't seem to be looking at us. A bloody cut ran across his scalp. He gripped the boomerang tightly.

I didn't understand what he was looking at. Then the horrible laughter echoed around the room again, and I realized it was coming from right in front of me.

Something stood between our father and us. At first, I could barely make it out—just a flicker of heat. But as I concentrated, it took on a vague form—the fiery outline of a man.

He was taller than Dad, and his laugh cut through me like a chainsaw.

"Well done," he said to my father. "Very well done, Julius."

"You were not summoned!" My father's voice trembled. He held up the boomerang, but the fiery man flicked one finger, and the stick flew from Dad's hand, shattering against the wall.

"I am never summoned, Julius," the man purred. "But when you open a door, you must be prepared for guests to walk through."

"Back to the Duat!" my father roared. "I have the power of the Great King!"

"Oh, scary," the fiery man said with amusement. "And even if you knew how to use that power, which you do not, he was never my match. I am the strongest. Now you will share his fate."

I couldn't make sense of anything, but I knew that I had to help my dad. I tried to pick up the nearest chunk of stone, but I was so terrified my fingers felt frozen and numb. My hands were useless.

Dad shot me a silent look of warning: Get out. I realized he was intentionally keeping the fiery man's back to us, hoping Sadie and I would escape unnoticed.

Sadie was still groggy. I managed to drag her behind a column, into the shadows. When she started to protest, I clamped my hand over her mouth. That woke her up. She saw what was happening and stopped fighting.

Alarms blared. Fire circled around the doorways of the gallery. The guards had to be on their way, but I wasn't sure if that was a good thing for us.

Dad crouched to the floor, keeping his eyes on his enemy, and opened his painted wooden box. He brought out a small rod like a ruler. He muttered something under his breath and the rod elongated into a wooden staff as tall as he was.

Sadie made a squeaking sound. I couldn't believe my eyes either, but things only got weirder.

Dad threw his staff at the fiery man's feet, and it changed into an enormous serpent—ten feet long and as big around as I was—with coppery scales and glowing red eyes. It lunged at the fiery man, who effortlessly grabbed the serpent by its neck. The man's hand burst into white-hot flames, and the snake burned to ashes.

"An old trick, Julius," the fiery man chided.

My dad glanced at us, silently urging us again to run. Part of me refused to believe any of this was real. Maybe I was unconscious, having a nightmare. Next to me, Sadie picked up a chunk of stone.

"How many?" my dad asked quickly, trying to keep the fiery man's attention. "How many did I release?"

"Why, all five," the man said, as if explaining something to a child. "You should know we're a package deal, Julius. Soon I'll release even more, and they'll be very grateful. I shall be named king again."

"The Demon Days," my father said. "They'll stop you before it's too late."

The fiery man laughed. "You think the House can stop me? Those old fools can't even stop arguing among themselves. Now let the story be told anew. And this time you shall never rise!"

The fiery man waved his hand. The blue circle at Dad's feet went dark. Dad grabbed for his toolbox, but it skittered across the floor.

"Good-bye, Osiris," the fiery man said. With another flick of his hand, he conjured a glowing coffin around our dad. At first it was transparent, but as our father struggled and pounded on its sides, the coffin became more and more solid—a golden Egyptian sarcophagus inlaid with jewels. My dad caught my eyes one last time, and mouthed the word Run! before the coffin sank into the floor, as if the ground had turned to water.

"Dad!" I screamed.

Sadie threw her stone, but it sailed harmlessly through the fiery man's head.

He turned, and for one terrible moment, his face appeared in the flames. What I saw made no sense. It was as if someone had superimposed two different faces on top of each other—one almost human, with pale skin, cruel, angular features, and glowing red eyes, the other like an animal with dark fur and sharp fangs. Worse than a dog or a wolf or a lion—some animal I'd never seen before. Those red eyes stared at me, and I knew I was going to die.

Behind me, heavy footsteps echoed on the marble floor of the Great Court. Voices were barking orders. The security guards, maybe the police—but they'd never get here in time.

The fiery man lunged at us. A few inches from my face, something shoved him backward. The air sparked with electricity. The amulet around my neck grew uncomfortably hot.

The fiery man hissed, regarding me more carefully. "So...it's you."

The building shook again. At the opposite end of the room, part of the wall exploded in a brilliant flash of light. Two people stepped through the gap—the man and the girl we'd seen at the Needle, their robes swirling around them. Both of them held staffs.

The fiery man snarled. He looked at me one last time and said, "Soon, boy."

Then the entire room erupted in flames. A blast of heat sucked all the air of out my lungs and I crumpled to the floor.

The last thing I remember, the man with the forked beard and the girl in blue were standing over me. I heard the security guards running and shouting, getting closer. The girl crouched over me and drew a long curved knife from her belt.

"We must act quickly," she told the man.

"Not yet," he said with some reluctance. His thick accent sounded French. "We must be sure before we destroy them."

I closed my eyes and drifted into unconsciousness.


	3. Chapter 3

E

**3. Imprisoned with My Cat**

[Give me the bloody mic.]

Hullo. Sadie here. My brother's a rubbish storyteller. Sorry about that. But now you've got me, so all is well.

Let's see. The explosion. Rosetta Stone in a billion pieces. Fiery evil bloke. Dad boxed in a coffin. Creepy Frenchman and Arab girl with the knife. Us passing out. Right.

So when I woke up, the police were rushing about as you might expect. They separated me from my brother. I didn't really mind that part. He's a pain anyway. But they locked me in the curator's office for ages. And yes, they used our bicycle chain to do it. Cretins.

I was shattered, of course. I'd just been knocked out by a fiery whatever-it-was. I'd watched my dad get packed in a sarcophagus and shot through the floor. I tried to tell the police about all that, but did they care? No.

Worst of all: I had a lingering chill, as if someone was pushing ice-cold needles into the back of my neck. It had started when I looked at those blue glowing words Dad had drawn on the Rosetta Stone and I knew what they meant. A family disease, perhaps? Can knowledge of boring Egyptian stuff be hereditary? With my luck.

Long after my gum had gone stale, a policewoman finally retrieved me from the curator's office. She asked me no questions. She just trundled me into a police car and took me home. Even then, I wasn't allowed to explain to Gran and Gramps. The policewoman just tossed me into my room and I waited. And waited.

I don't like waiting.

I paced the floor. My room was nothing posh, just an attic space with a window and a bed and a desk. There wasn't much to do. Muffin sniffed my legs and her tail puffed up like a bottlebrush. I suppose she doesn't fancy the smell of museums. She hissed and disappeared under the bed.

"Thanks a lot," I muttered.

I opened the door, but the policewoman was standing guard.

"The inspector will be with you in a moment," she told me. "Please stay inside."

I could see downstairs—just a glimpse of Gramps pacing the room, wringing his hands, while Carter and a police inspector talked on the sofa. I couldn't make out what they were saying.

"Could I just use the loo?" I asked the nice officer.

"No." She closed the door in my face. As if I might rig an explosion in the toilet. Honestly.

I dug out my iPod and scrolled through my playlist. Nothing struck me. I threw it on my bed in disgust. When I'm too distracted for music, that is a very sad thing. I wondered why Carter got to talk to the police first. It wasn't fair.

I fiddled with the necklace Dad had given me. I'd never been sure what the symbol meant. Carter's was obviously an eye, but mine looked a bit like an angel, or perhaps a killer alien robot.

Why on earth had Dad asked if I still had it? Of course I still had it. It was the only gift he'd ever given me. Well, apart from Muffin, and with the cat's attitude, I'm not sure I would call her a proper gift.

Dad had practically abandoned me at age six, after all. The necklace was my one link to him. On good days I would stare at it and remember him fondly. On bad days (which were much more frequent) I would fling it across the room and stomp on it and curse him for not being around, which I found quite therapeutic. But in the end, I always put it back on.

At any rate, during the weirdness at the museum—and I'm not making this up—the necklace got hotter. I nearly took it off, but I couldn't help wondering if it truly was protecting me somehow.

I'll make things right, Dad had said, with that guilty look he often gives me.

Well, colossal fail, Dad.

What had he been thinking? I wanted to believe it had all been a bad dream: the glowing hieroglyphs, the snake staff, the coffin. Things like that simply don't happen. But I knew better. I couldn't dream anything as horrifying as that fiery man's face when he'd turned on us. "Soon, boy," he'd told Carter, as if he intended to track us down. Just the idea made my hands tremble. I also couldn't help wondering about our stop at Cleopatra's Needle, how Dad had insisted on seeing it, as if he were steeling his courage, as if what he did at the British Museum had something to do with my mum.

My eyes wandered across my room and fixed on my desk.

No, I thought. Not going to do it.

But I walked over and opened the drawer. I shoved aside a few old mags, my stash of sweets, a stack of maths homework I'd forgotten to hand in, and a few pictures of me and my mates Liz and Emma trying on ridiculous hats in Camden Market. And there at the bottom of it all was the picture of Mum.

Gran and Gramps have loads of pictures. They keep a shrine to Ruby in the hall cupboard—Mum's childhood artwork, her O-level results, her graduation picture from university, her favorite jewelry. It's quite mental. I was determined not to be like them, living in the past. I barely remembered Mum, after all, and nothing could change the fact she was dead.

But I did keep the one picture. It was of Mum and me at our house in Los Angeles, just after I was born. She stood out on the balcony, the Pacific Ocean behind her, holding a wrinkled pudgy lump of baby that would someday grow up to be yours truly. Baby me was not much to look at, but Mum was gorgeous, even in shorts and a tattered T-shirt. Her eyes were deep blue. Her blond hair was clipped back. Her skin was perfect. Quite depressing compared to mine. People always say I look like her, but I couldn't even get the spot off my chin much less look so mature and beautiful.

[Stop smirking, Carter.]

The photo fascinated me because I hardly remembered our lives together at all. But the main reason I'd kept the photo was because of the symbol on Mum's T-shirt: one of those life symbols—an ankh.

My dead mother wearing the symbol for life. Nothing could've been sadder. But she smiled at the camera as if she knew a secret. As if my dad and she were sharing a private joke.

Something tugged at the back of my mind. That stocky man in the trench coat who'd been arguing with Dad across the street—he'd said something about the Per Ankh.

Had he meant ankh as in the symbol for life, and if so, what was a per? I supposed he didn't mean pear as in the fruit.

I had an eerie feeling that if I saw the words Per Ankh written in hieroglyphics, I would know what they meant.

I put down the picture of Mum. I picked up a pencil and turned over one of my old homework papers. I wondered what would happen if I tried to draw the words Per Ankh. Would the right design just occur to me?

As I touched pencil to paper, my bedroom door opened. "Miss Kane?"

I whirled and dropped the pencil.

A police inspector stood frowning in my doorway. "What are you doing?"

"Maths," I said.

My ceiling was quite low, so the inspector had to stoop to come in. He wore a lint-colored suit that matched his gray hair and his ashen face. "Now then, Sadie. I'm Chief Inspector Williams. Let's have a chat, shall we? Sit down."

I didn't sit, and neither did he, which must've annoyed him. It's hard to look in charge when you're hunched over like Quasimodo.

"Tell me everything, please," he said, "from the time your father came round to get you."

"I already told the police at the museum."

"Again, if you don't mind."

So I told him everything. Why not? His left eyebrow crept higher and higher as I told him the strange bits like the glowing letters and serpent staff.

"Well, Sadie," Inspector Williams said. "You've got quite an imagination."

"I'm not lying, Inspector. And I think your eyebrow is trying to escape."

He tried to look at his own eyebrows, then scowled. "Now, Sadie, I'm sure this is very hard on you. I understand you want to protect your father's reputation. But he's gone now—"

"You mean through the floor in a coffin," I insisted. "He's not dead."

Inspector Williams spread his hands. "Sadie, I'm very sorry. But we must find out why he did this act of...well..."

"Act of what?"

He cleared his throat uncomfortably. "Your father destroyed priceless artifacts and apparently killed himself in the process. We'd very much like to know why."

I stared at him. "Are you saying my father's a terrorist? Are you mad?"

"We've made calls to some of your father's associates. I understand his behavior had become erratic since your mother's death. He'd become withdrawn and obsessive in his studies, spending more and more time in Egypt—"

"He's a bloody Egyptologist! You should be looking for him, not asking stupid questions!"

"Sadie," he said, and I could hear in his voice that he was resisting the urge to strangle me. Strangely, I get this a lot from adults. "There are extremist groups in Egypt that object to Egyptian artifacts being kept in other countries' museums. These people might have approached your father. Perhaps in his state, your father became an easy target for them. If you've heard him mention any names—"

I stormed past him to the window. I was so angry I could hardly think. I refused to believe Dad was dead. No, no, no. And a terrorist? Please. Why did adults have to be so thick? They always say "tell the truth," and when you do, they don't believe you. What's the point?

I stared down at the dark street. Suddenly that cold tingly feeling got worse than ever. I focused on the dead tree where I'd met Dad earlier. Standing there now, in the dim light of a streetlamp, looking up at me, was the pudgy bloke in the black trench coat and the round glasses and the fedora—the man Dad had called Amos.

I suppose I should've felt threatened by an odd man staring up at me in the dark of night. But his expression was full of concern. And he looked so familiar. It was driving me mad that I couldn't remember why.

Behind me, the inspector cleared his throat. "Sadie, no one blames you for the attack on the museum. We understand you were dragged into this against your will."

I turned from the window. "Against my will? I chained the curator in his office."

The inspector's eyebrow started to creep up again. "Be that as it may, surely you didn't understand what your father meant to do. Possibly your brother was involved?"

I snorted. "Carter? Please."

"So you are determined to protect him as well. You consider him a proper brother, do you?"

I couldn't believe it. I wanted to smack his face. "What's that supposed to mean? Because he doesn't look like me?"

The inspector blinked. "I only meant—"

"I know what you meant. Of course he's my brother!"

Inspector Williams held up his hands apologetically, but I was still seething. As much as Carter annoyed me, I hated it when people assumed we weren't related, or looked at my father askance when he said the three of us were a family—like we'd done something wrong. Stupid Dr. Martin at the museum. Inspector Williams. It happened every time Dad and Carter and I were together. Every bloody time.

"I'm sorry, Sadie," the inspector said. "I only want to make sure we separate the innocent from the guilty. It will go much easier for everyone if you cooperate. Any information. Anything your father said. People he might've mentioned."

"Amos," I blurted out, just to see his reaction. "He met a man named Amos."

Inspector Williams sighed. "Sadie, he couldn't have done. Surely you know that. We spoke with Amos not one hour ago, on the phone from his home in New York."

"He isn't in New York!" I insisted. "He's right—"

I glanced out the window and Amos was gone. Bloody typical.

"That's not possible," I said.

"Exactly," the inspector said.

"But he was here!" I exclaimed. "Who is he? One of Dad's colleagues? How did you know to call him?"

"Really, Sadie. This acting must stop."

"Acting?"

The inspector studied me for a moment, then set his jaw as if he'd made a decision. "We've already had the truth from Carter. I didn't want to upset you, but he told us everything. He understands there's no point protecting your father now. You might as well help us, and there will be no charges against you."

"You shouldn't lie to children!" I yelled, hoping my voice carried all the way downstairs. "Carter would never say a word against Dad, and neither will I!"

The inspector didn't even have the decency to look embarrassed.

He crossed his arms. "I'm sorry you feel that way, Sadie. I'm afraid it's time we went downstairs...to discuss consequences with your grandparents."


	4. Chapter 4

E

**4. Kidnapped by a Not-So-Stranger**

I JUST LOVE FAMILY MEETINGS. Very cozy, with the Christmas garlands round the fireplace and a nice pot of tea and a detective from Scotland Yard ready to arrest you.

Carter slumped on the sofa, cradling Dad's workbag. I wondered why the police had let him keep it. It should have been evidence or something, but the inspector didn't seem to notice it at all.

Carter looked awful—I mean even worse than usual. Honestly, the boy had never been in a proper school, and he dressed like a junior professor, with his khaki trousers and a button-down shirt and loafers. He's not bad looking, I suppose. He's reasonably tall and fit and his hair isn't hopeless. He's got Dad's eyes, and my mates Liz and Emma have even told me from his picture that he's hot, which I must take with a grain of salt because (a) he's my brother, and (b) my mates are a bit crazed. When it came to clothes, Carter wouldn't have known hot if it bit him on the bum.

[Oh, don't look at me like that, Carter. You know it's true.]

At any rate, I shouldn't have been too hard on him. He was taking Dad's disappearance even worse than I was.

Gran and Gramps sat on either side of him, looking quite nervous. The pot of tea and a plate of biscuits sat on the table, but no one was having any. Chief Inspector Williams ordered me into the only free chair. Then he paced in front of the fireplace importantly. Two more police stood by the front door—the woman from earlier and a big bloke who kept eyeing the biscuits.

"Mr. and Mrs. Faust," Inspector Williams said, "I'm afraid we have two uncooperative children."

Gran fidgeted with the trim of her dress. It's hard to believe she's related to Mum. Gran is frail and colorless, like a stick person really, while Mum in the photos always looked so happy and full of life. "They're just children," she managed. "Surely you can't blame them."

"Pah!" Gramps said. "This is ridiculous, Inspector. They aren't responsible!"

Gramps is a former rugby player. He has beefy arms, a belly much too big for his shirt, and eyes sunk deep in his face, as if someone had punched them (well, actually Dad had punched them years ago, but that's another story). Gramps is quite scary looking. Usually people got out of his way, but Inspector Williams didn't seem impressed.

"Mr. Faust," he said, "what do you imagine the morning headlines will read? 'British Museum attacked. Rosetta Stone destroyed.' Your son-in-law—"

"Former son-in-law," Gramps corrected.

"—was most likely vaporized in the explosion, or he ran off, in which case—"

"He didn't run off!" I shouted.

"We need to know where he is," the inspector continued. "And the only witnesses, your grandchildren, refuse to tell me the truth."

"We did tell you the truth," Carter said. "Dad isn't dead. He sank through the floor."

Inspector Williams glanced at Gramps, as if to say, There, you see? Then he turned to Carter. "Young man, your father has committed a criminal act. He's left you behind to deal with the consquences—"

"That's not true!" I snapped, my voice trembling with rage. I couldn't believe Dad would intentionally leave us at the mercy of police, of course. But the idea of him abandoning me—well, as I might have mentioned, that's a bit of a sore point.

"Dear, please," Gran told me, "the inspector is only doing his job."

"Badly!" I said.

"Let's all have some tea," Gran suggested.

"No!" Carter and I yelled at once, which made me feel bad for Gran, as she practically wilted into the sofa.

"We can charge you," the inspector warned, turning on me. "We can and we will—"

He froze. Then he blinked several times, as if he'd forgotten what he was doing.

Gramps frowned. "Er, Inspector?"

"Yes..." Chief Inspector Williams murmured dreamily. He reached in his pocket and took out a little blue booklet—an American passport. He threw it in Carter's lap.

"You're being deported," the inspector announced. "You're to leave the country within twenty-four hours. If we need to question you further, you'll be contacted through the FBI."

Carter's mouth fell open. He looked at me, and I knew I wasn't imagining how odd this was. The inspector had completely changed direction. He'd been about to arrest us. I was sure of it. And then out of the blue, he was deporting Carter? Even the other police officers looked confused.

"Sir?" the policewoman asked. "Are you sure—"

"Quiet, Linley. The two of you may go."

The cops hesitated until Williams made a shooing motion with his hand. Then they left, closing the door behind them.

"Hold on," Carter said. "My father's disappeared, and you want me to leave the country?"

"Your father is either dead or a fugitive, son," the inspector said. "Deportation is the kindest option. It's already been arranged."

"With whom?" Gramps demanded. "Who authorized this?"

"With..." The inspector got that funny blank look again. "With the proper authorities. Believe me, it's better than prison."

Carter looked too devastated to speak, but before I could feel sorry for him, Inspector Williams turned to me. "You, too, miss."

He might as well have hit me with a sledgehammer.

"You're deporting me?" I asked. "I live here!"

"You're an American citizen. And under the circumstances, it's best for you to return home."

I just stared at him. I couldn't remember any home except this flat. My mates at school, my room, everything I knew was here. "Where am I supposed to go?"

"Inspector," Gran said, her voice trembling. "This isn't fair. I can't believe—"

"I'll give you some time to say good-bye," the inspector interrupted. Then he frowned as if baffled by his own actions. "I—I must be going."

This made no sense, and the inspector seemed to realize it, but he walked to the front door anyway. When he opened it, I almost jumped out of my chair, because the man in black, Amos, was standing there. He'd lost his trench coat and hat somewhere, but was still wearing the same pinstripe suit and round glasses. His braided hair glittered with gold beads.

I thought the inspector would say something, or express surprise, but he didn't even acknowledge Amos. He walked right past him and into the night.

Amos came inside and closed the door. Gran and Gramps stood up.

"You," Gramps growled. "I should've known. If I was younger, I would beat you to a pulp."

"Hello, Mr. and Mrs. Faust," Amos said. He looked at Carter and me as if we were problems to be solved. "It's time we had a talk."

Amos made himself right at home. He flopped onto the sofa and poured himself tea. He munched on a biscuit, which was quite dangerous, because Gran's biscuits are horrid.

I thought Gramps's head would explode. His face went bright red. He came up behind Amos and raised his hand as if he were about to smack him, but Amos kept munching his biscuit.

"Please, sit down," he told us.

And we all sat. It was the strangest thing—as if we'd been waiting for his order. Even Gramps dropped his hand and moved round the sofa. He sat next to Amos with a disgusted sigh.

Amos sipped his tea and regarded me with some displeasure. That wasn't fair, I thought. I didn't look that bad, considering what we'd been through. Then he looked at Carter and grunted.

"Terrible timing," he muttered. "But there's no other way. They'll have to come with me."

"Excuse me?" I said. "I'm not going anywhere with some strange man with biscuit on his face!"

He did in fact have biscuit crumbs on his face, but he apparently didn't care, as he didn't bother to check.

"I'm no stranger, Sadie," he said. "Don't you remember?"

It was creepy hearing him talk to me in such a familiar way. I felt I should know him. I looked at Carter, but he seemed just as mystified as I was.

"No, Amos," Gran said, trembling. "You can't take Sadie. We had an agreement."

"Julius broke that agreement tonight," Amos said. "You know you can't care for Sadie anymore—not after what's happened. Their only chance is to come with me."

"Why should we go anywhere with you?" Carter asked. "You almost got in a fight with Dad!"

Amos looked at the workbag in Carter's lap. "I see you kept your father's bag. That's good. You'll need it. As for getting into fights, Julius and I did that quite a lot. If you didn't notice, Carter, I was trying to stop him from doing something rash. If he'd listened to me, we wouldn't be in this situation."

I had no idea what he was on about, but Gramps apparently understood.

"You and your superstitions!" he said. "I told you we want none of it."

Amos pointed to the back patio. Through the glass doors, you could see the lights shining on the Thames. It was quite a nice view at night, when you couldn't notice how run-down some of the buildings were.

"Superstition, is it?" Amos asked. "And yet you found a place to live on the east bank of the river."

Gramps turned even redder. "That was Ruby's idea. Thought it would protect us. But she was wrong about many things, wasn't she? She trusted Julius and you, for one!"

Amos looked unfazed. He smelled interesting—like old-timey spices, copal and amber, like the incense shops in Covent Garden.

He finished his tea and looked straight at Gran. "Mrs. Faust, you know what's begun. The police are the least of your worries."

Gran swallowed. "You...you changed that inspector's mind. You made him deport Sadie."

"It was that or see the children arrested," Amos said.

"Hang on," I said. "You changed Inspector Williams's mind? How?"

Amos shrugged. "It's not permanent. In fact we should get to New York in the next hour or so before Inspector Williams begins to wonder why he let you go."

Carter laughed incredulously. "You can't get to New York from London in a hour. Not even the fastest plane—"

"No," Amos agreed. "Not a plane." He turned back to Gran as if everything had been settled. "Mrs. Faust, Carter and Sadie have only one safe option. You know that. They'll come to the mansion in Brooklyn. I can protect them there."

"You've got a mansion," Carter said. "In Brooklyn."

Amos gave him an amused smile. "The family mansion. You'll be safe there."

"But our dad—"

"Is beyond your help for now," Amos said sadly. "I'm sorry, Carter. I'll explain later, but Julius would want you to be safe. For that, we must move quickly. I'm afraid I'm all you've got."

That was a bit harsh, I thought. Carter glanced at Gran and Gramps. Then he nodded glumly. He knew that they didn't want him around. He'd always reminded them of our dad. And yes, it was a stupid reason not to take in your grandson, but there you are.

"Well, Carter can do what he wants," I said. "But I live here. And I'm not going off with some stranger, am I?"

I looked at Gran for support, but she was staring at the lace doilies on the table as if they were suddenly quite interesting.

"Gramps, surely..."

But he wouldn't meet my eyes either. He turned to Amos. "You can get them out of the country?"

"Hang on!" I protested.

Amos stood and wiped the crumbs off his jacket. He walked to the patio doors and stared out at the river. "The police will be back soon. Tell them anything you like. They won't find us."

"You're going to kidnap us?" I asked, stunned. I looked at Carter. "Do you believe this?"

Carter shouldered the workbag. Then he stood like he was ready to go. Possibly he just wanted to be out of Gran and Gramps's flat. "How do you plan to get to New York in an hour?" he asked Amos. "You said, not a plane."

"No," Amos agreed. He put his finger to the window and traced something in the condensation—another bloody hieroglyph.

"A boat," I said—then realized I'd translated aloud, which I wasn't supposed to be able to do.

Amos peered at me over the top of his round glasses. "How did you—"

"I mean that last bit looks like a boat," I blurted out. "But that can't be what you mean. That's ridiculous."

"Look!" Carter cried.

I pressed in next to him at the patio doors. Down at the quayside, a boat was docked. But not a regular boat, mind you. It was an Egyptian reed boat, with two torches burning in the front, and a big rudder in the back. A figure in a black trench coat and hat—possibly Amos's—stood at the tiller.

I'll admit, for once, I was at a loss for words.

"We're going in that," Carter said. "To Brooklyn."

"We'd better get started," Amos said.

I whirled back to my grandmother. "Gran, please!"

She brushed a tear from her cheek. "It's for the best, my dear. You should take Muffin."

"Ah, yes," Amos said. "We can't forget the cat."

He turned towards the stairs. As if on cue, Muffin raced down in a leopard-spotted streak and leaped into my arms. She never does that.

"Who are you?" I asked Amos. It was clear I was running out of options, but I at least wanted answers. "We can't just go off with some stranger."

"I'm not a stranger." Amos smiled at me. "I'm family."

And suddenly I remembered his face smiling down at me, saying, "Happy birthday, Sadie." A memory so distant, I'd almost forgotten.

"Uncle Amos?" I asked hazily.

"That's right, Sadie," he said. "I'm Julius's brother. Now come along. We have a long way to go."


	5. Chapter 5

R

**5. We Meet the Monkey**

IT'S CARTER AGAIN. SORRY. We had to turn off the tape for a while because we were being followed by—well, we'll get to that later.

Sadie was telling you how we left London, right?

So anyway, we followed Amos down to the weird boat docked at the quayside. I cradled Dad's workbag under my arm. I still couldn't believe he was gone. I felt guilty leaving London without him, but I believed Amos about one thing: right now Dad was beyond our help. I didn't trust Amos, but I figured if I wanted to find out what had happened to Dad, I was going to have to go along with him. He was the only one who seemed to know anything.

Amos stepped aboard the reed boat. Sadie jumped right on, but I hesitated. I'd seen boats like this on the Nile before, and they never seemed very sturdy.

It was basically woven together from coils of plant fiber—like a giant floating rug. I figured the torches at the front couldn't be a good idea, because if we didn't sink, we'd burn. At the back, the tiller was manned by a little guy wearing Amos's black trench coat and hat. The hat was shoved down on his head so I couldn't see his face. His hands and feet were lost in the folds of the coat.

"How does this thing move?" I asked Amos. "You've got no sail."

"Trust me." Amos offered me a hand.

The night was cold, but when I stepped on board I suddenly felt warmer, as if the torchlight were casting a protective glow over us. In the middle of the boat was a hut made from woven mats. From Sadie's arms, Muffin sniffed at it and growled.

"Take a seat inside," Amos suggested. "The trip might be a little rough."

"I'll stand, thanks." Sadie nodded at the little guy in back. "Who's your driver?"

Amos acted as if he hadn't heard the question. "Hang on, everyone!" He nodded to the steersman, and the boat lurched forward.

The feeling was hard to describe. You know that tingle in the pit of your stomach when you're on a roller coaster and it goes into free fall? It was kind of like that, except we weren't falling, and the feeling didn't go away. The boat moved with astounding speed. The lights of the city blurred, then were swallowed in a thick fog. Strange sounds echoed in the dark: slithering and hissing, distant screams, voices whispering in languages I didn't understand.

The tingling turned to nausea. The sounds got louder, until I was about to scream myself. Then suddenly the boat slowed. The noises stopped, and the fog dissipated. City lights came back, brighter than before.

Above us loomed a bridge, much taller than any bridge in London. My stomach did a slow roll. To the left, I saw a familiar skyline—the Chrysler Building, the Empire State Building.

"Impossible," I said. "That's New York."

Sadie looked as green as I felt. She was still cradling Muffin, whose eyes were closed. The cat seemed to be purring. "It can't be," Sadie said. "We only traveled a few minutes."

And yet here we were, sailing up the East River, right under the Williamsburg Bridge. We glided to a stop next to a small dock on the Brooklyn side of the river. In front of us was an industrial yard filled with piles of scrap metal and old construction equipment. In the center of it all, right at the water's edge, rose a huge factory warehouse heavily painted with graffiti, the windows boarded up.

"That is not a mansion," Sadie said. Her powers of perception are really amazing.

"Look again." Amos pointed to the top of the building.

"How...how did you..." My voice failed me. I wasn't sure why I hadn't seen it before, but now it was obvious: a five-story mansion perched on the roof of the warehouse, like another layer of a cake. "You couldn't build a mansion up there!"

"Long story," Amos said. "But we needed a private location."

"And is this the east shore?" Sadie asked. "You said something about that in London—my grandparents living on the east shore."

Amos smiled. "Yes. Very good, Sadie. In ancient times, the east bank of the Nile was always the side of the living, the side where the sun rises. The dead were buried west of the river. It was considered bad luck, even dangerous, to live there. The tradition is still strong among...our people."

"Our people?" I asked, but Sadie muscled in with another question.

"So you can't live in Manhattan?" she asked.

Amos's brow furrowed as he looked across at the Empire State Building. "Manhattan has other problems. Other gods. It's best we stay separate."

"Other what?" Sadie demanded.

"Nothing." Amos walked past us to the steersman. He plucked off the man's hat and coat—and there was no one underneath. The steersman simply wasn't there. Amos put on his fedora, folded his coat over his arm, then waved toward a metal staircase that wound all the way up the side of the warehouse to the mansion on the roof.

"All ashore," he said. "And welcome to the Twenty-first Nome."

"Gnome?" I asked, as we followed him up the stairs. "Like those little runty guys?"

"Heavens, no," Amos said. "I hate gnomes. They smell horrible."

"But you said—"

"Nome, n-o-m-e. As in a district, a region. The term is from ancient times, when Egypt was divided into forty-two provinces. Today, the system is a little different. We've gone global. The world is divided into three hundred and sixty nomes. Egypt, of course, is the First. Greater New York is the Twenty-first."

Sadie glanced at me and twirled her finger around her temple.

"No, Sadie," Amos said without looking back. "I'm not crazy. There's much you need to learn."

We reached the top of the stairs. Looking up at the mansion, it was hard to understand what I was seeing. The house was at least fifty feet tall, built of enormous limestone blocks and steel-framed windows. There were hieroglyphs engraved around the windows, and the walls were lit up so the place looked like a cross between a modern museum and an ancient temple. But the weirdest thing was that if I glanced away, the whole building seemed to disappear. I tried it several times just to be sure. If I looked for the mansion from the corner of my eye, it wasn't there. I had to force my eyes to refocus on it, and even that took a lot of willpower.

Amos stopped before the entrance, which was the size of a garage door—a dark heavy square of timber with no visible handle or lock. "Carter, after you."

"Um, how do I—"

"How do you think?"

Great, another mystery. I was about to suggest we ram Amos's head against it and see if that worked. Then I looked at the door again, and I had the strangest feeling. I stretched out my arm. Slowly, without touching the door, I raised my hand and the door followed my movement—sliding upward until it disappeared into the ceiling.

Sadie looked stunned. "How..."

"I don't know," I admitted, a little embarrassed. "Motion sensor, maybe?"

"Interesting." Amos sounded a little troubled. "Not the way I would've done it, but very good. Remarkably good."

"Thanks, I think."

Sadie tried to go inside first, but as soon as she stepped on the threshold, Muffin wailed and almost clawed her way out of Sadie's arms.

Sadie stumbled backward. "What was that about, cat?"

"Oh, of course," Amos said. "My apologies." He put his hand on the cat's head and said, very formally, "You may enter."

"The cat needs permission?" I asked.

"Special circumstances," Amos said, which wasn't much of an explanation, but he walked inside without saying another word. We followed, and this time Muffin stayed quiet.

"Oh my god..." Sadie's jaw dropped. She craned her neck to look at the ceiling, and I thought the gum might fall out of her mouth.

"Yes," Amos said. "This is the Great Room."

I could see why he called it that. The cedar-beamed ceiling was four stories high, held up by carved stone pillars engraved with hieroglyphs. A weird assortment of musical instruments and Ancient Egyptian weapons decorated the walls. Three levels of balconies ringed the room, with rows of doors all looking out on the main area. The fireplace was big enough to park a car in, with a plasma-screen TV above the mantel and massive leather sofas on either side. On the floor was a snakeskin rug, except it was forty feet long and fifteen feet wide—bigger than any snake. Outside, through glass walls, I could see the terrace that wrapped around the house. It had a swimming pool, a dining area, and a blazing fire pit. And at the far end of the Great Room was a set of double doors marked with the Eye of Horus, and chained with half a dozen padlocks. I wondered what could possibly be behind them.

But the real showstopper was the statue in the center of the Great Room. It was thirty feet tall, made of black marble. I could tell it was of an Egyptian god because the figure had a human body and an animal's head—like a stork or a crane, with a long neck and a really long beak.

The god was dressed ancient-style in a kilt, sash, and neck collar. He held a scribe's stylus in one hand, and an open scroll in the other, as if he had just written the hieroglyphs inscribed there: an ankh—the Egyptian looped cross—with a rectangle traced around its top.

"That's it!" Sadie exclaimed. "Per Ankh."

I stared at her in disbelief. "All right, how you can read that?"

"I don't know," she said. "But it's obvious, isn't it? The top one is shaped like the floor plan of a house."

"How did you get that? It's just a box." The thing was, she was right. I recognized the symbol, and it was supposed to be a simplified picture of a house with a doorway, but that wouldn't be obvious to most people, especially people named Sadie. Yet she looked absolutely positive.

"It's a house," she insisted. "And the bottom picture is the ankh, the symbol for life. Per Ankh—the House of Life."

"Very good, Sadie." Amos looked impressed. "And this is a statue of the only god still allowed in the House of Life—at least, normally. Do you recognize him, Carter?"

Just then it clicked: the bird was an ibis, an Egyptian river bird. "Thoth," I said. "The god of knowledge. He invented writing."

"Indeed," Amos said.

"Why the animal heads?" Sadie asked. "All those Egyptian gods have animal heads. They look so silly."

"They don't normally appear that way," Amos said. "Not in real life."

"Real life?" I asked. "Come on. You sound like you've met them in person."

Amos's expression didn't reassure me. He looked as if he were remembering something unpleasant. "The gods could appear in many forms—usually fully human or fully animal, but occasionally as a hybrid form like this. They are primal forces, you understand, a sort of bridge between humanity and nature. They are depicted with animal heads to show that they exist in two different worlds at once. Do you understand?"

"Not even a little," Sadie said.

"Mmm." Amos didn't sound surprised. "Yes, we have much training to do. At any rate, the god before you, Thoth, founded the House of Life, for which this mansion is the regional headquarters. Or at least...it used to be. I'm the only member left in the Twenty-first Nome. Or I was, until you two came along."

"Hang on." I had so many questions I could hardly think where to start. "What is the House of Life? Why is Thoth the only god allowed here, and why are you—"

"Carter, I understand how you feel." Amos smiled sympathetically. "But these things are better discussed in daylight. You need to get some sleep, and I don't want you to have nightmares."

"You think I can sleep?"

"Meow." Muffin stretched in Sadie's arms and let loose a huge yawn.

Amos clapped his hands. "Khufu!"

I thought he'd sneezed, because Khufu is a weird name, but then a little dude about three feet tall with gold fur and a purple shirt came clambering down the stairs. It took me a second to realize it was a baboon wearing an L.A. Lakers jersey.

The baboon did a flip and landed in front of us. He showed off his fangs and made a sound that was half roar, half belch. His breath smelled like nacho-flavored Doritos.

All I could think to say was, "The Lakers are my home team!"

The baboon slapped his head with both hands and belched again.

"Oh, Khufu likes you," Amos said. "You'll get along famously."

"Right." Sadie looked dazed. "You've got a monkey butler. Why not?"

Muffin purred in Sadie's arms as if the baboon didn't bother her at all.

"Agh!" Khufu grunted at me.

Amos chuckled. "He wants to go one-on-one with you, Carter. To, ah, see your game."

I shifted from foot to foot. "Um, yeah. Sure. Maybe tomorrow. But how can you understand—"

"Carter, I'm afraid you'll have a lot to get used to," Amos said. "But if you're going to survive and save your father, you have to get some rest."

"Sorry," Sadie said, "did you say 'survive and save our father'? Could you expand on that?"

"Tomorrow," Amos said. "We'll begin your orientation in the morning. Khufu, show them to their rooms, please."

"Agh-uhh!" the baboon grunted. He turned and waddled up the stairs. Unfortunately, the Lakers jersey didn't completely cover his multicolored rear.

We were about to follow when Amos said, "Carter, the workbag, please. It's best if I lock it in the library."

I hesitated. I'd almost forgotten the bag on my shoulder, but it was all I had left of my father. I didn't even have our luggage because it was still locked up at the British Museum. Honestly, I'd been surprised that the police hadn't taken the workbag too, but none of them seemed to notice it.

"You'll get it back," Amos promised. "When the time is right."

He asked nicely enough, but something in his eyes told me that I really didn't have a choice.

I handed over the bag. Amos took it gingerly, as if it were full of explosives.

"See you in the morning." He turned and strode toward the chained-up doors. They unlatched themselves and opened just enough for Amos to slip through without showing us anything on the other side. Then the chains locked again behind him.

I looked at Sadie, unsure what to do. Staying by ourselves in the Great Room with the creepy statue of Thoth didn't seem like much fun, so we followed Khufu up the stairs.

Sadie and I got adjoining rooms on the third floor, and I've got to admit, they were way cooler than any place I'd ever stayed before.

I had my own kitchenette, fully stocked with my favorite snacks: ginger ale—[No, Sadie. It's not an old person's soda! Be quiet!]—Twix, and Skittles. It seemed impossible. How did Amos know what I liked? The TV, computer, and stereo system were totally high-tech. The bathroom was stocked with my regular brand of toothpaste, deodorant, everything. The king-size bed was awesome, too, though the pillow was a little strange. Instead of a cloth pillow, it was an ivory headrest like I'd seen in Egyptian tombs. It was decorated with lions and (of course) more hieroglyphs.

The room even had a deck that looked out on New York Harbor, with views of Manhattan and the Statue of Liberty in the distance, but the sliding glass doors were locked shut somehow. That was my first indication that something was wrong.

I turned to look for Khufu, but he was gone. The door to my room was shut. I tried to open it, but it was locked.

A muffled voice came from the next room. "Carter?"

"Sadie." I tried the door to her adjoining room, but it was locked too.

"We're prisoners," she said. "Do you think Amos...I mean, can we trust him?"

After all I'd seen today, I didn't trust anything, but I could hear the fear in Sadie's voice. It triggered an unfamiliar feeling in me, like I needed to reassure her. The idea seemed ridiculous. Sadie had always seemed so much braver than me—doing what she wanted, never caring about the consequences. I was the one who got scared. But right now, I felt like I needed to play a role I hadn't played in a long, long time: big brother.

"It'll be okay." I tried to sound confident. "Look, if Amos wanted to hurt us, he could've done it by now. Try to get some sleep."

"Carter?"

"Yeah?"

"It was magic, wasn't it? What happened to Dad at the museum. Amos's boat. This house. All of it is magic."

"I think so."

I could hear her sigh. "Good. At least I'm not going mad."

"Don't let the bedbugs bite," I called. And I realized I hadn't said that to Sadie since we had lived together in Los Angeles, when Mom was still alive.

"I miss Dad," she said. "I hardly ever saw him, I know, but...I miss him."

My eyes got a little teary, but I took a deep breath. I was not going to go all weak. Sadie needed me. Dad needed us.

"We'll find him," I told her. "Pleasant dreams."

I listened, but the only thing I heard was Muffin meowing and scampering around, exploring her new space. At least she didn't seem unhappy.

I got ready for bed and crawled in. The covers were comfortable and warm, but the pillow was just too weird. It gave me neck cramps, so I put it on the floor and went to sleep without it.

My first big mistake.


	6. Chapter 6

R

**6. Breakfast with a Crocodile**

HOW TO DESCRIBE IT? Not a nightmare. It was much more real and frightening.

As I slept, I felt myself go weightless. I drifted up, turned, and saw my own sleeping form below.

I'm dying, I thought. But that wasn't it, either. I wasn't a ghost. I had a new shimmering golden form with wings instead of arms. I was some kind of bird. [No, Sadie, not a chicken. Will you let me tell the story, please?]

I knew I wasn't dreaming, because I don't dream in color. I certainly don't dream in all five senses. The room smelled faintly of jasmine. I could hear the carbonation bubbles pinging in the can of ginger ale I'd opened on my nightstand. I could feel a cold wind ruffling through my feathers, and I realized the windows were open. I didn't want to leave, but a strong current pulled me out of the room like a leaf in a storm.

The lights of the mansion faded below me. The skyline of New York blurred and disappeared. I shot through the mist and darkness, strange voices whispering all around me. My stomach tingled as it had earlier that night on Amos's barge. Then the mist cleared, and I was in a different place.

I floated above a barren mountain. Far below, a grid of city lights stretched across the valley floor. Definitely not New York. It was nighttime, but I could tell I was in the desert. The wind was so dry, the skin on my face was like paper. And I know that doesn't make sense, but my face felt like my normal face, as if that part of me hadn't transformed into a bird. [Fine, Sadie. Call me the Carter-headed chicken. Happy?]

Below me on a ridge stood two figures. They didn't seem to notice me, and I realized I wasn't glowing anymore. In fact I was pretty much invisible, floating in the darkness. I couldn't make out the two figures clearly, except to recognize that they weren't human. Staring harder, I could see that one was short, squat, and hairless, with slimy skin that glistened in the starlight—like an amphibian standing on its hind legs. The other was tall and scarecrow skinny, with rooster claws instead of feet. I couldn't see his face very well, but it looked red and moist and...well, let's just say I was glad I couldn't see it better.

"Where is he?" the toadie-looking one croaked nervously.

"Hasn't taken a permanent host yet," the rooster-footed guy chided. "He can only appear for a short time."

"You're sure this is the place?"

"Yes, fool! He'll be here as soon—"

A fiery form appeared on the ridge. The two creatures fell to the ground, groveling in the dirt, and I prayed like crazy that I really was invisible.

"My lord!" the toad said.

Even in the dark, the newcomer was hard to see—just the silhouette of a man outlined in flames.

"What do they call this place?" the man asked. And as soon as he spoke, I knew for sure he was the guy who'd attacked my dad at the British Museum. All the fear I'd felt at the museum came rushing back, paralyzing me. I remembered trying to pick up that stupid rock to throw, but I hadn't been able to do even that. I'd completely failed my dad.

"My lord," Rooster Foot said. "The mountain is called Camelback. The city is called Phoenix."

The fiery man laughed—a booming sound like thunder. "Phoenix. How appropriate! And the desert so much like home. All it needs now is to be scoured of life. The desert should be a sterile place, don't you think?"

"Oh yes, my lord," the toadie agreed. "But what of the other four?"

"One is already entombed," the fiery man said. "The second is weak. She will be easily manipulated. That leaves only two. And they will be dealt with soon enough."

"Er...how?" the toadie asked.

The fiery man glowed brighter. "You are an inquisitive little tadpole, aren't you?" He pointed at the toad and the poor creature's skin began to steam.

"No!" the toadie begged. "No-o-o-o!"

I could hardly watch. I don't want to describe it. But if you've heard what happens when cruel kids pour salt on snails, you'll have a pretty good idea of what happened to the toadie. Soon there was nothing left.

Rooster Foot took a nervous step back. I couldn't blame him.

"We will build my temple here," the fiery man said, as if nothing had happened. "This mountain shall serve as my place of worship. When it is complete, I will summon the greatest storm ever known. I will cleanse everything. Everything."

"Yes, my lord," Rooster Foot agreed quickly. "And, ah, if I may suggest, my lord, to increase your power..." The creature bowed and scraped and moved forward, as if he wanted to whisper in the fiery man's ear.

Just when I thought Rooster Foot was going to become fried chicken for sure, he said something to the fiery dude that I couldn't make out, and the fiery dude burned brighter.

"Excellent! If you can do this, you will be rewarded. If not..."

"I understand, my lord."

"Go then," the fiery man said. "Unleash our forces. Start with the longnecks. That should soften them up. Collect the younglings and bring them to me. I want them alive, before they have time to learn their powers. Do not fail me."

"No, lord."

"Phoenix," the fiery man mused. "I like that very much." He swept his hand across the horizon, as if he were imagining the city in flames. "Soon I will rise from your ashes. It will be a lovely birthday present."

I woke with my heart pounding, back in my own body. I felt hot, as if the fiery guy were starting to burn me. Then I realized that there was a** cat on** my chest.

Muffin stared at me, her eyes half closed. "Meow."

"How did you get in?" I muttered.

I sat up, and for a second I wasn't sure where I was. Some hotel in another city? I almost called for my dad...and then I remembered.

Yesterday. The museum. The sarcophagus.

It all crashed down on me so hard I could barely breathe.

Stop, I told myself. You don't have time for grief. And this is going to sound weird, but the voice in my head almost sounded like a different person—older, stronger. Either that was a good sign, or I was going crazy.

Remember what you saw, the voice said. He's after you. You have to be ready.

I shivered. I wanted to believe I'd just had a bad dream, but I knew better. I'd been through too much in the last day to doubt what I'd seen. Somehow, I'd actually left my body while I slept. I'd been to Phoenix—thousands of miles away. The fiery dude was there. I hadn't understood much of what he'd said, but he'd talked about sending his forces to capture the younglings. Gee, wonder who that could be?

Muffin jumped off the bed and sniffed at the ivory headrest, looking up at me as if she were trying to tell me something.

"You can have it," I told her. "It's uncomfortable."

She butted her head against it and stared at me accusingly. "Meow."

"Whatever, cat."

I got up and showered. When I tried to get dressed, I found that my old clothes had disappeared in the night. Everything in the closet was my size, but way different than what I was used to—baggy drawstring pants and loose shirts, all plain white linen, and robes for cold weather, kind of what the fellahin, the peasants in Egypt, wear. It wasn't exactly my style.

Sadie likes to tell me that I don't have a style. She complains that I dress like I'm an old man—button-down shirt, slacks, dress shoes. Okay, maybe. But here's the thing. My dad had always drilled into my head that I had to dress my best.

I remember the first time he explained it to me. I was ten. We were on our way to the airport in Athens, and it was like 112 degrees outside, and I was complaining that I wanted to wear shorts and a T-shirt. Why couldn't I be comfortable? We weren't going anywhere important that day—just traveling.

My dad put his hand on my shoulder. "Carter, you're getting older. You're an African American man. People will judge you more harshly, and so you must always look impeccable."

"That isn't fair!" I insisted.

"Fairness does not mean everyone gets the same," Dad said. "Fairness means everyone gets what they need. And the only way to get what you need is to make it happen yourself. Do you understand?"

I told him I didn't. But still I did what he asked—like caring about Egypt, and basketball, and music. Like traveling with only one suitcase. I dressed the way Dad wanted me to, because Dad was usually right. In fact I'd never known him to be wrong...until the night at the British Museum.

Anway, I put on the linen clothes from the closet. The slipper shoes were comfortable, though I doubted they'd be much good to run in.

The door to Sadie's room was open, but she wasn't there.

Thankfully my bedroom door wasn't locked anymore. Muffin joined me and we walked downstairs, passing a lot of unoccupied bedrooms on the way. The mansion could've easily slept a hundred people, but instead it felt empty and sad.

Down in the Great Room, Khufu the baboon sat on the sofa with a basketball between his legs and a chunk of strange-looking meat in his hands. It was covered in pink feathers. ESPN was on the television, and Khufu was watching highlights from the games the night before.

"Hey," I said, though I felt a little weird talking to him. "Lakers win?"

Khufu looked at me and patted his basketball like he wanted a game. "Agh, agh."

He had a pink feather hanging from his chin, and the sight made my stomach do a slow roll.

"Um, yeah," I said. "We'll play later, okay?"

I could see Sadie and Amos out on the terrace, eating breakfast by the pool. It should've been freezing out there, but the fire pit was blazing, and neither Amos nor Sadie looked cold. I headed their way, then hesitated in front of the statue of Thoth. In the daylight, the bird-headed god didn't look quite so scary. Still, I could swear those beady eyes were watching me expectantly.

What had the fiery guy said last night? Something about catching us before we learned our powers. It sounded ridiculous, but for a moment I felt a surge of strength—like the night before when I'd opened the front door just by raising my hand. I felt like I could lift anything, even this thirty-foot-tall statue if I wanted to. In a kind of trance, I stepped forward.

Muffin meowed impatiently and butted my foot. The feeling dissolved.

"You're right," I told the cat. "Stupid idea."

Besides, I could smell breakfast now—French toast, bacon, hot chocolate—and I couldn't blame Muffin for being in a hurry. I followed her out to the terrace.

"Ah, Carter," Amos said. "Merry Christmas, my boy. Join us."

"About time," Sadie grumbled. "I've been up for ages."

But she held my eyes for a moment, like she was thinking the same thing I was: Christmas. We hadn't spent a Christmas morning together since Mom died. I wondered if Sadie remembered how we used to make god's-eye decorations out of yarn and Popsicle sticks.

Amos poured himself a cup of coffee. His clothes were similar to those he'd worn the day before, and I had to admit the guy had style. His tailored suit was made of blue wool, he wore a matching fedora, and his hair was freshly braided with dark blue lapis lazuli, one of the stones the Egyptians often used for jewelry. Even his glasses matched. The round lenses were tinted blue. A tenor sax rested on a stand near the fire pit, and I could totally picture him playing out here, serenading the East River.

As for Sadie, she was dressed in a white linen pajama outfit like me, but somehow she'd managed to keep her combat boots. She'd probably slept with them on. She looked pretty comical with the red-streaked hair and the outfit, but since I wasn't dressed any better, I could hardly make fun of her.

"Um...Amos?" I asked. "You didn't have any pet birds, did you? Khufu's eating something with pink feathers."

"Mmm." Amos sipped his coffee. "Sorry if that disturbed you. Khufu's very picky. He only eats foods that end in -o. Doritos, burritos, flamingos."

I blinked. "Did you say—"

"Carter," Sadie warned. She looked a little queasy, like she'd already had this conversation. "Don't ask."

"Okay," I said. "Not asking."

"Please, Carter, help yourself." Amos waved toward a buffet table piled high with food. "Then we can get started with the explanations."

I didn't see any flamingo on the buffet table, which was fine by me, but there was just about everything else. I snagged some pancakes with butter and syrup, some bacon, and a glass of OJ.

Then I noticed movement in the corner of my eye. I glanced at the swimming pool. Something long and pale was gliding just under the surface of the water.

I almost dropped my plate. "Is that—"

"A crocodile," Amos confirmed. "For good luck. He's albino, but please don't mention that. He's sensitive."

"His name is Philip of Macedonia," Sadie informed me.

I wasn't sure how Sadie was taking this all so calmly, but I figured if she wasn't freaking out, I shouldn't either.

"That's a long name," I said.

"He's a long crocodile," Sadie said. "Oh, and he likes bacon."

To prove her point, she tossed a piece of bacon over her shoulder. Philip lunged out of the water and snapped up the treat. His hide was pure white and his eyes were pink. His mouth was so big, he could've snapped up an entire pig.

"He's quite harmless to my friends," Amos assured me. "In the old days, no temple would be complete without a lake full of crocodiles. They are powerful magic creatures."

"Right," I said. "So the baboon, the crocodile...any other pets I should know about?"

Amos thought for a moment. "Visible ones? No, I think that's it."

I took a seat as far from the pool as possible. Muffin circled my legs and purred. I hoped she had enough sense to stay away from magic crocodiles named Philip.

"So, Amos," I said between bites of pancake. "Explanations."

"Yes," he agreed. "Where to start..."

"Our dad," Sadie suggested. "What happened to him?"

Amos took a deep breath. "Julius was attempting to summon a god. Unfortunately, it worked."

It was kind of hard to take Amos seriously, talking about summoning gods while he spread butter on a bagel.

"Any god in particular?" I asked casually. "Or did he just order a generic god?"

Sadie kicked me under the table. She was scowling, as if she actually believed what Amos was saying.

Amos took a bite of bagel. "There are many Egyptian gods, Carter. But your dad was after one in particular."

He looked at me meaningfully.

"Osiris," I remembered. "When Dad was standing in front of the Rosetta Stone, he said, 'Osiris, come.' But Osiris is a legend. He's make-believe."

"I wish that were true." Amos stared across the East River at the Manhattan skyline, gleaming in the morning sun. "The Ancient Egyptians were not fools, Carter. They built the pyramids. They created the first great nation state. Their civilization lasted thousands of years."

"Yeah," I said. "And now they're gone."

Amos shook his head. "A legacy that powerful does not disappear. Next to the Egyptians, the Greeks and Romans were babies. Our modern nations like Great Britain and America? Blinks of an eye. The very oldest root of civilization, at least of Western civilization, is Egypt. Look at the pyramid on the dollar bill. Look at the Washington Monument—the world's largest Egyptian obelisk. Egypt is still very much alive. And so, unfortunately, are her gods."

"Come on," I argued. "I mean...even if I believe there's a real thing called magic. Believing in ancient gods is totally different. You're joking, right?"

But as I said it, I thought about the fiery guy in the museum, the way his face had shifted between human and animal. And the statue of Thoth—how its eyes had followed me.

"Carter," Amos said, "the Egyptians would not have been stupid enough to believe in imaginary gods. The beings they described in their myths are very, very real. In the old days, the priests of Egypt would call upon these gods to channel their power and perform great feats. That is the origin of what we now call magic. Like many things, magic was first invented by the Egyptians. Each temple had a branch of magicians called the House of Life. Their magicians were famed throughout the ancient world."

"And you're an Egyptian magician."

Amos nodded. "So was your father. You saw it for yourself last night."

I hesitated. It was hard to deny my dad had done some weird stuff at the museum—some stuff that looked like magic.

"But he's an archaeologist," I said stubbornly.

"That's his cover story. You'll remember that he specialized in translating ancient spells, which are very difficult to understand unless you work magic yourself. Our family, the Kane family, has been part of the House of Life almost since the beginning. And your mother's family is almost as ancient."

"The Fausts?" I tried to imagine Grandma and Grandpa Faust doing magic, but unless watching rugby on TV and burning cookies was magical, I couldn't see it.

"They had not practiced magic for many generations," Amos admitted. "Not until your mother came along. But yes, a very ancient bloodline."

Sadie shook her head in disbelief. "So now Mum was magic, too. Are you joking?"

"No jokes," Amos promised. "The two of you...you combine the blood of two ancient families, both of which have a long, complicated history with the gods. You are the most powerful Kane children to be born in many centuries."

I tried to let that sink in. At the moment, I didn't feel powerful. I felt queasy. "You're telling me our parents secretly worshipped animal-headed gods?" I asked.

"Not worshipped," Amos corrected. "By the end of the ancient times, Egyptians had learned that their gods were not to be worshipped. They are powerful beings, primeval forces, but they are not divine in the sense one might think of God. They are created entities, like mortals, only much more powerful. We can respect them, fear them, use their power, or even fight them to keep them under control—"

"Fight gods?" Sadie interrupted.

"Constantly," Amos assured her. "But we don't worship them. Thoth taught us that."

I looked at Sadie for help. The old guy had to be crazy. But Sadie was looking like she believed every word.

"So..." I said. "Why did Dad break the Rosetta Stone?"

"Oh, I'm sure he didn't mean to break it," Amos said. "That would've horrified him. In fact, I imagine my brethren in London have repaired the damage by now. The curators will soon check their vaults and discover that the Rosetta Stone miraculously survived the explosion."

"But it was blown into a million pieces!" I said. "How could they repair it?"

Amos picked up a saucer and threw it onto the stone floor. The saucer shattered instantly.

"That was to destroy," Amos said. "I could've done it by magic—ha-di—but it's simpler just to smash it. And now..." Amos held out his hand. "Join. Hi-nehm."

A blue hieroglyphic symbol burned in the air above his palm.

The pieces of the saucer flew into his hand and reassembled like a puzzle, even the smallest bits of dust gluing themselves into place. Amos put the perfect saucer back on the table.

"Some trick," I managed. I tried to sound calm about it, but I was thinking of all the odd things that had happened to my dad and me over the years, like those gunmen in the Cairo hotel who'd ended up hanging by their feet from a chandelier. Was it possible my dad had made that happen with some kind of spell?

Amos poured milk in the saucer, and put it on the floor. Muffin came padding over. "At any rate, your father would never intentionally damage a relic. He simply didn't realize how much power the Rosetta Stone contained. You see, as Egypt faded, its magic collected and concentrated into its remaining relics. Most of these, of course, are still in Egypt. But you can find some in almost every major museum. A magician can use these artifacts as focal points to work more powerful spells."

"I don't get it," I said.

Amos spread his hands. "I'm sorry, Carter. It takes years of study to understand magic, and I'm trying to explain it to you in a single morning. The important thing is, for the past six years your father has been looking for a way to summon Osiris, and last night he thought he had found the right artifact to do it."

"Wait, why did he want Osiris?"

Sadie gave me a troubled look. "Carter, Osiris was the lord of the dead. Dad was talking about making things right. He was talking about Mum."

Suddenly the morning seemed colder. The fire pit sputtered in the wind coming off the river.

"He wanted to bring Mom back from the dead?" I said. "But that's crazy!"

Amos hesitated. "It would've been dangerous, Inadvisable, Foolish, But not crazy. Your father is a powerful magician. If, in fact, that is what he was after, he might have accomplished it, using the power of Osiris."

I stared at Sadie. "You're actually buying this?"

"You saw the magic at the museum. The fiery bloke. Dad summoned something from the stone."

"Yeah," I said, thinking of my dream. "But that wasn't Osiris, was it?"

"No," Amos said. "Your father got more than he bargained for. He did release the spirit of Osiris. In fact, I think he successfully joined with the god—"

"Joined with?"

Amos held up his hand. "Another long conversation. For now, let's just say he drew the power of Osiris into himself. But he never got the chance to use it because, according to what Sadie has told me, it appears that Julius released five gods from the Rosetta Stone. Five gods who were all trapped together."

I glanced at Sadie. "You told him everything?"

"He's going to help us, Carter."

I wasn't quite ready to trust this guy, even if he was our uncle, but I decided I didn't have much choice.

"Okay, yeah," I said. "The fiery guy said something like 'You released all five.' What did he mean?"

Amos sipped his coffee. The faraway look on his face reminded me of my dad. "I don't want to scare you."

"Too late."

"The gods of Egypt are very dangerous. For the last two thousand years or so, we magicians have spent much of our time binding and banishing them whenever they appear. In fact, our most important law, issued by Chief Lector Iskandar in Roman times, forbids unleashing the gods or using their power. Your father broke that law once before."

Sadie's face paled. "Does this have something to do with Mum's death? Cleopatra's Needle in London?"

"It has everything to do with that, Sadie. Your parents...well, they thought they were doing something good. They took a terrible risk, and it cost your mother her life. Your father took the blame. He was exiled, I suppose you would say. Banished. He was forced to move around constantly because the House monitored his activities. They feared he would continue his...research. As indeed he did."

I thought about the times Dad would look over his shoulder as he copied some ancient inscriptions, or wake me up at three or four in the morning and insist it was time to change hotels, or warn me not to look in his workbag or copy certain pictures from old temple walls—as if our lives depended on it.

"Is that why you never came round?" Sadie asked Amos. "Because Dad was banished?"

"The House forbade me to see him. I loved Julius. It hurt me to stay away from my brother, and from you children. But I could not see you—until last night, when I simply had no choice but to try to help. Julius has been obsessed with finding Osiris for years. He was consumed with grief because of what happened to your mother. When I learned that Julius was about to break the law again, to try to set things right, I had to stop him. A second offense would've meant a death sentence. Unfortunately, I failed. I should've known he was too stubborn."

I looked down at my plate. My food had gotten cold. Muffin leaped onto the table and rubbed against my hand. When I didn't object, she started eating my bacon.

"Last night at the museum," I said, "the girl with the knife, the man with the forked beard—they were magicians too? From the House of Life?"

"Yes," Amos said. "Keeping an eye on your father. You are fortunate they let you go."

"The girl wanted to kill us," I remembered. "But the guy with the beard said, not yet."

"They don't kill unless it is absolutely necessary," Amos said. "They will wait to see if you are a threat."

"Why would we be a threat?" Sadie demanded. "We're children! The summoning wasn't our idea."

Amos pushed away his plate. "There is a reason you two were raised separately."

"Because the Fausts took Dad to court," I said matter-of-factly. "And Dad lost."

"It was much more than that," Amos said. "The House insisted you two be separated. Your father wanted to keep you both, even though he knew how dangerous it was."

Sadie looked like she'd been smacked between the eyes. "He did?"

"Of course. But the House intervened and made sure your grandparents got custody of you, Sadie. If you and Carter were raised together, you could become very powerful. Perhaps you have already sensed changes over the past day."

I thought about the surges of strength I'd been feeling, and the way Sadie suddenly seemed to know how to read Ancient Egyptian. Then I thought of something even further back.

"Your sixth birthday," I told Sadie.

"The cake," she said immediately, the memory passing between us like an electric spark.

At Sadie's sixth birthday party, the last one we'd shared as a family, Sadie and I had a huge argument. I don't remember what it was about. I think I wanted to blow out the candles for her. We started yelling. She grabbed my shirt. I pushed her. I remember Dad rushing toward us, trying to intervene, but before he could, Sadie's birthday cake exploded. Icing splattered the walls, our parents, the faces of Sadie's little six-year-old friends. Dad and Mom separated us. They sent me to my room. Later, they said we must've hit the cake by accident as we were fighting, but I knew we hadn't. Something much weirder had made it explode, as if it had responded to our anger. I remembered Sadie crying with a chunk of cake on her forehead, an upside-down candle stuck to the ceiling with its wick still burning, and an adult visitor, one of my parents' friends, his glasses speckled with white frosting.

I turned to Amos. "That was you. You were at Sadie's party."

"Vanilla icing," he recalled. "Very tasty. But it was clear even then that you two would be difficult to raise in the same household."

"And so..." I faltered. "What happens to us now?"

I didn't want to admit it, but I couldn't stand the thought of being separated from Sadie again. She wasn't much, but she was all I had.

"You must be trained properly," Amos said, "whether the House approves or not."

"Why wouldn't they approve?" I asked.

"I will explain everything, don't worry. But we must start your lessons if we are to stand any chance of finding your father and putting things right. Otherwise the entire world is in danger. If we only knew where—"

"Phoenix," I blurted out.

Amos stared at me. "What?"

"Last night I had...well, not a dream, exactly..." I felt stupid, but I told him what had happened while I slept.

Judging from Amos's expression, the news was even worse than I thought.

"You're sure he said 'birthday present'?" he asked.

"Yeah, but what does that mean?"

"And a permanent host," Amos said. "He didn't have one yet?"

"Well, that's what the rooster-footed guy said—"

"That was a demon," Amos said. "A minion of chaos. And if demons are coming through to the mortal world, we don't have much time. This is bad, very bad."

"If you live in Phoenix," I said.

"Carter, our enemy won't stop in Phoenix. If he's grown so powerful so fast...What did he say about the storm, exactly?"

"He said: 'I will summon the greatest storm ever known.'"

Amos scowled. "The last time he said that, he created the Sahara. A storm that large could destroy North America, generating enough chaos energy to give him an almost invincible form."

"What are you talking about? Who is this guy?"

Amos waved away the question. "More important right now: why didn't you sleep with the headrest?"

I shrugged. "It was uncomfortable." I looked at Sadie for support. "You didn't use it, did you?"

Sadie rolled her eyes. "Well, of course I did. It was obviously there for a reason."

Sometimes I really hate my sister. [Ow! That's my foot!]

"Carter," Amos said, "sleep is dangerous. It's a doorway into the Duat."

"Lovely," Sadie grumbled. "Another strange word."

"Ah...yes, sorry," Amos said. "The Duat is the world of spirits and magic. It exists beneath the waking world like a vast ocean, with many layers and regions. We submerged just under its surface last night to reach New York, because travel through the Duat is much faster. Carter, your consciousness also passed through its shallowest currents as you slept, which is how you witnessed what happened in Phoenix. Fortunately, you survived that experience. But the deeper you go into the Duat, the more horrible things you encounter, and the more difficult it is to return. There are entire realms filled with demons, palaces where the gods exist in their pure forms, so powerful their mere presence would burn a human to ashes. There are prisons that hold beings of unspeakable evil, and some chasms so deep and chaotic that not even the gods dare explore them. Now that your powers are stirring, you must not sleep without protection, or you leave yourself open to attacks from the Duat or...unintended journeys through it. The headrest is enchanted, to keep your consciousness anchored to your body."

"You mean I actually did..." My mouth tasted like metal. "Could he have killed me?"

Amos's expression was grave. "The fact that your soul can travel like that means you are progressing faster than I thought. Faster than should be possible. If the Red Lord had noticed you—"

"The Red Lord?" Sadie said. "That's the fiery bloke?"

Amos rose. "I must find out more. We can't simply wait for him to find you. And if he releases the storm on his birthday, at the height of his powers—"

"You mean you're going to Phoenix?" I could barely get the words out. "Amos, that fiery man defeated Dad like his magic was a joke! Now he's got demons, and he's getting stronger, and—you'll be killed!"

Amos gave me a dry smile, like he'd already weighed the dangers and didn't need a reminder. His expression reminded me painfully of Dad's. "Don't count your uncle out so quickly, Carter. I've got some magic of my own. Besides, I must see what is happening for myself if we're to have any chance at saving your father and stopping the Red Lord. I'll be quick and careful. Just stay here. Muffin will guard you."

I blinked. "The cat will guard us? You can't just leave us here! What about our training?"

"When I return," Amos promised. "Don't worry, the mansion is protected. Just do not leave. Do not be tricked into opening the door for anyone. And whatever happens, do not go into the library. I absolutely forbid it. I will be back by sunset."

Before we could protest, Amos walked calmly to the edge of the terrace and jumped.

"No!" Sadie screamed. We ran to the railing and looked over. Below was a hundred-foot drop into the East River. There was no sign of Amos. He'd simply vanished.

Philip of Macedonia splashed in his pool. Muffin jumped onto the railing and insisted we pet her.

We were alone in a strange mansion with a baboon, a crocodile, and a weird cat. And apparently, the entire world was in danger.

I looked at Sadie. "What do we do now?"

She crossed her arms. "Well, that's obvious, isn't it? We explore the library."


	7. Chapter 7

E

**7. I Drop a Little Man on His Head**

HONESTLY, CARTER IS SO THICK sometimes I can't believe we're related.

I mean when someone says I forbid it, that's a good sign it's worth doing. I made for the library straightaway.

"Hold on!" Carter cried. "You can't just—"

"Brother dear," I said, "did your soul leave your body again while Amos was talking, or did you actually hear him? Egyptian gods real. Red Lord bad. Red Lord's birthday: very soon, very bad. House of Life: fussy old magicians who hate our family because Dad was a bit of a rebel, whom by the way you could take a lesson from. Which leaves us—just us—with Dad missing, an evil god about to destroy the world, and an uncle who just jumped off the building—and I can't actually blame him." I took a breath. [Yes, Carter, I do have to breathe occasionally.] "Am I missing anything? Oh, yes, I also have a brother who is supposedly quite powerful from an ancient bloodline, blah, blah, et cetera, but is too afraid to visit a library. Now, coming or not?"

Carter blinked as if I'd just hit him, which I suppose I had in a way.

"I just..." He faltered. "I just think we should be careful."

I realized the poor boy was quite scared, which I couldn't hold against him, but it did startle me. Carter was my big brother, after all—older, more sophisticated, the one who traveled the world with Dad. Big brothers are the ones who are supposed to pull their punches. Little sisters—well, we should be able to hit as hard as we like, shouldn't we? But I realized that possibly, just possibly, I'd been a bit harsh with him.

"Look," I said. "We need to help Dad, yes? There's got to be some powerful stuff in that library, otherwise Amos wouldn't keep it locked up. You do want to help Dad?"

Carter shifted uncomfortably. "Yeah...of course."

Well, that was one problem sorted, so we headed for the library. But as soon as Khufu saw what we were up to, he scrambled off the sofa with his basketball and jumped in front of the library doors. Who knew baboons were so speedy? He barked at us, and I have to say baboons have enormous fangs. And they're not any prettier when they've been chewing up exotic pink birds.

Carter tried to reason with him. "Khufu, we're not going to steal anything. We just want—"

"Agh!" Khufu dribbled his basketball angrily.

"Carter," I said, "you're not helping. Look here, Khufu. I have...ta-da!" I held up a little yellow box of cereal I'd taken from the buffet table. "Cheerios! Ends with an -o. Yumsies!"

"Aghhh!" Khufu grunted, more excited now than angry.

"Want it?" I coaxed. "Just take it to the couch and pretend you didn't see us, yes?"

I threw the cereal towards the couch, and the baboon lunged after it. He grabbed the box in midair and was so excited, he ran straight up the wall and sat on the fireplace mantel, where he began gingerly picking out Cheerios and eating them one at a time.

Carter looked at me with grudging admiration. "How did you—"

"Some of us think ahead. Now, let's open these doors."

That was not so easily done. They were made of thick wood laced with giant steel chains and padlocked. Complete overkill.

Carter stepped forward. He tried to raise the doors by lifting his hand, which had been quite impressive the night before, only now accomplished nothing.

He shook the chains the old-fashioned way, then yanked on the padlocks.

"No good," he said.

Ice needles tingled on the back of my neck. It was almost as if someone—or something—was whispering an idea in my head. "What was that word Amos used at breakfast with the saucer?"

"For 'join'?" Carter said. "Hi-nehm or something."

"No, the other one, for 'destroy'."

"Uh, ha-di. But you'd need to know magic and the hieroglyphics, wouldn't you? And even then—"

I raised my hand toward the door. I pointed with two fingers and my thumb—an odd gesture I'd never made before, like a make-believe gun except with the thumb parallel to the ground.

"Ha-di!"

Bright gold hieroglyphs burned against the largest padlock.

And the doors exploded. Carter hit the floor as chains shattered and splinters flew all over the Great Room. When the dust cleared, Carter got up, covered in wood shavings. I seemed to be fine. Muffin circled my feet, mewing contentedly, as if this were all very normal.

Carter stared at me. "How exactly—"

"Don't know," I admitted. "But the library's open."

"Think you overdid it a little? We're going to be in so much trouble—"

"We'll just figure out a way to zap the door back, won't we?"

"No more zapping, please," Carter said. "That explosion could've killed us."

"Oh, do you think if you tried that spell on a person—"

"No!" He stepped back nervously.

I felt gratified that I could make him squirm, but I tried not to smile. "Let's just explore the library, shall we?"

The truth was, I couldn't have ha-di-ed anyone. As soon as I stepped forward, I felt so faint that I almost collapsed.

Carter caught me as I stumbled. "You okay?"

"Fine," I managed, though I didn't feel fine. "I'm tired"—my stomach rumbled—"and famished."

"You just ate a huge breakfast."

It was true, but I felt as if I hadn't had food in weeks.

"Never mind," I told him. "I'll manage."

Carter studied me skeptically. "Those hieroglyphs you created were golden. Dad and Amos both used blue. Why?"

"Maybe everyone has his own color," I suggested. "Maybe you'll get hot pink."

"Very funny."

"Come on, pink wizard," I said. "Inside we go."

The library was so amazing, I almost forgot my dizziness. It was bigger than I'd imagined, a round chamber sunk deep into solid rock, like a giant well. This didn't make sense, as the mansion was sitting on top of a warehouse, but then again nothing else about the place was exactly normal.

From the platform where we stood, a staircase descended three stories to the bottom floor. The walls, floor, and domed ceiling were all decorated with multicolored pictures of people, gods, and monsters. I'd seen such illustrations in Dad's books (yes, all right, sometimes when I was in the Piccadilly bookshop I'd wander into the Egypt section and sneak a look at Dad's books, just to feel some connection to him, not because I wanted to read them) but the pictures in the books had always been faded and smudged. These in the library looked newly painted, making the entire room a work of art.

"It's beautiful," I said.

A blue starry sky glittered on the ceiling, but it wasn't a solid field of blue. Rather, the sky was painted in a strange swirling pattern. I realized it was shaped like a woman. She lay curled on her side—her body, arms, and legs dark blue and dotted with stars. Below, the library floor was done in a similar way, the green-and-brown earth shaped into a man's body, dotted with forests and hills and cities. A river snaked across his chest.

The library had no books. Not even bookshelves. Instead, the walls were honeycombed with round cubbyholes, each one holding a sort of plastic cylinder.

At each of the four compass points, a ceramic statue stood on a pedestal. The statues were half-size humans wearing kilts and sandals, with glossy black wedge-shaped haircuts and black eyeliner around their eyes.

[Carter says the eyeliner stuff is called kohl, as if it matters.]

At any rate, one statue held a stylus and scroll. Another held a box. Another held a short, hooked staff. The last was empty-handed.

"Sadie." Carter pointed to the center of the room. Sitting on a long stone table was Dad's workbag.

Carter started down the stairs, but I grabbed his arm. "Hang on. What about traps?"

He frowned. "Traps?"

"Didn't Egyptian tombs have traps?"

"Well...sometimes. But this isn't a tomb. Besides, more often they had curses, like the burning curse, the donkey curse—"

"Oh, lovely. That sounds so much better."

He trotted down the steps, which made me feel quite ridiculous, as I'm usually the one to forge ahead. But I supposed if someone had to get cursed with a burning skin rash or attacked by a magical donkey, it was better Carter than me.

We made it to the middle of the room with no excitement. Carter opened the bag. Still no traps or curses. He brought out the strange box Dad had used in the British Museum.

It was made of wood, and about the right size to hold a loaf of French bread. The lid was decorated much like the library, with gods and monsters and sideways-walking people.

"How did the Egyptians move like that?" I wondered. "All sideways with their arms and legs out. It seems quite silly."

Carter gave me one of his God, you're stupid looks. "They didn't walk like that in real life, Sadie."

"Well, why are they painted like that, then?"

"They thought paintings were like magic. If you painted yourself, you had to show all your arms and legs. Otherwise, in the afterlife you might be reborn without all your pieces."

"Then why the sideways faces? They never look straight at you. Doesn't that mean they'll lose the other side of their face?"

Carter hesitated. "I think they were afraid the picture would be too human if it was looking right at you. It might try to become you."

"So is there anything they weren't afraid of?"

"Little sisters," Carter said. "If they talked too much, the Egyptians threw them to the crocodiles."

He had me for a second. I wasn't used to him displaying a sense of humor. Then I punched him. "Just open the bloody box."

The first thing he pulled out was a lump of white gunk.

"Wax," Carter pronounced.

"Fascinating." I picked up a wooden stylus and a palette with small indentations in its surface for ink, then a few glass jars of the ink itself—black, red, and gold. "And a prehistoric painting set."

Carter pulled out several lengths of brown twine, a small ebony cat statue, and a thick roll of paper. No, not paper. Papyrus. I remembered Dad explaining how the Egyptians made it from a river plant because they never invented paper. The stuff was so thick and rough, it made me wonder if the poor Egyptians had had to use toilet papyrus. If so, no wonder they walked sideways.

Finally I pulled out a wax figurine.

"Ew," I said.

He was a tiny man, crudely fashioned, as if the maker had been in a hurry. His arms were crossed over his chest, his mouth was open, and his legs were cut off at the knees. A lock of human hair was wrapped round his waist.

Muffin jumped on the table and sniffed the little man. She seemed to think him quite interesting.

"There's nothing here," Carter said.

"What do you want?" I asked. "We've got wax, some toilet papyrus, an ugly statue—"

"Something to explain what happened to Dad. How do we get him back? Who was that fiery man he summoned?"

I held up the wax man. "You heard him, warty little troll. Tell us what you know."

I was just messing about. But the wax man became soft and warm like flesh. He said, "I answer the call."

I screamed and dropped him on his tiny head. Well, can you blame me?

"Ow!" he said.

Muffin came over to have a sniff, and the little man started cursing in another language, possibly Ancient Egyptian. When that didn't work, he screeched in English: "Go away! I'm not a mouse!"

I scooped up Muffin and put her on the floor.

Carter's face had gone as soft and waxy as the little man's. "What are you?" he asked.

"I'm a shabti, of course!" The figurine rubbed his dented head. He still looked quite lumpish, only now he was a living lump. "Master calls me Doughboy, though I find the name insulting. You may call me Supreme-Force-Who-Crushes-His-Enemies!"

"All right, Doughboy," I said.

He scowled at me, I think, though it was hard to tell with his mashed-up face.

"You weren't supposed to trigger me! Only the master does that."

"The master, meaning Dad," I guessed. "Er, Julius Kane?"

"That's him," Doughboy grumbled. "Are we done yet? Have I fulfilled my service?"

Carter stared at me blankly, but I thought I was beginning to understand.

"So, Doughboy," I told the lump. "You were triggered when I picked you up and gave you a direct order: Tell us what you know. Is that correct?"

Doughboy crossed his stubby arms. "You're just toying with me now. Of course that's correct. Only the master is supposed to be able to trigger me, by the way. I don't know how you did it, but he'll blast you to pieces when he finds out."

Carter cleared his throat. "Doughboy, the master is our dad, and he's missing. He's been magically sent away somehow and we need your help—"

"Master is gone?" Doughboy smiled so widely, I thought his wax face would split open. "Free at last! See you, suckers!"

He lunged for the end of the table but forgot he had no feet. He landed on his face, then began crawling toward the edge, dragging himself with his hands. "Free! Free!"

He fell off the table and onto the floor with a thud, but that didn't seem to discourage him. "Free! Free!"

He made it another centimeter or two before I picked him up and threw him in Dad's magic box. Doughboy tried to get out, but the box was just tall enough that he couldn't reach the rim. I wondered if it had been designed that way.

"Trapped!" he wailed. "Trapped!"

"Oh, shut up," I told him. "I'm the mistress now. And you'll answer my questions."

Carter raised his eyebrow. "How come you get to be in charge?"

"Because I was smart enough to activate him."

"You were just joking around!"

I ignored my brother, which is one of my many talents. "Now, Doughboy, first off, what's a shabti?"

"Will you let me out of the box if I tell you?"

"You have to tell me," I pointed out. "And no, I won't."

He sighed. "Shabti means answerer, as even the stupidest slave could tell you."

Carter snapped his fingers. "I remember now! The Egyptians made models out of wax or clay—servants to do every kind of job they could imagine in the afterlife. They were supposed to come to life when their master called, so the deceased person could, like, kick back and relax and let the shabti do all his work for eternity."

"First," Doughboy snipped, "that is typical of humans! Lazing around while we do all the work. Second, afterlife work is only one function of shabti. We are also used by magicians for a great number of things in this life, because magicians would be total incompetents without us. Third, if you know so much, why are you asking me?"

"Why did Dad cut off your legs," I wondered, "and leave you with a mouth?"

"I—" Doughboy clapped his little hands over his mouth. "Oh, very funny. Threaten the wax statue. Big bully! He cut my legs off so I wouldn't run away or come to life in perfect form and try to kill him, naturally. Magicians are very mean. They maim statues to control them. They are afraid of us!"

"Would you come to life and try to kill him, had he made you perfectly?"

"Probably," Doughboy admitted. "Are we done?"

"Not by half," I said. "What happened to our dad?"

Doughboy shrugged. "How should I know? But I see his wand and staff aren't in the box."

"No," Carter said. "The staff—the thing that turned into a snake—it got incinerated. And the wand...is that the boomerang thing?"

"The boomerang thing?" Doughboy said. "Gods of Eternal Egypt, you're dense. Of course that's his wand."

"It got shattered," I said.

"Tell me how," Doughboy demanded.

Carter told him the story. I wasn't sure that was the best idea, but I supposed a ten-centimeter-tall statue couldn't do us that much harm.

"This is wonderful!" Doughboy cried.

"Why?" I asked. "Is Dad still alive?"

"No!" Doughboy said. "He's almost certainly dead. The five gods of the Demon Days released? Wonderful! And anyone who duels with the Red Lord—"

"Wait," I said. "I order you to tell me what happened."

"Ha!" Doughboy said. "I only have to tell you what I know. Making educated guesses is a completely different task. I declare my service fulfilled!"

With that, he turned back to lifeless wax.

"Wait!" I picked him up again and shook him. "Tell me your educated guesses!"

Nothing happened.

"Maybe he's got a timer," Carter said. "Like only once a day. Or maybe you broke him."

"Carter, make a helpful suggestion! What do we do now?"

He looked at the four ceramic statues on their pedestals. "Maybe—"

"Other shabti?"

"Worth a shot."

If the statues were answerers, they weren't very good at it. We tried holding them while giving them orders, though they were quite heavy. We tried pointing at them and shouting. We tried asking nicely. They gave us no answers at all.

I grew so frustrated I wanted to ha-di them into a million pieces, but I was still so hungry and tired, I had the feeling that spell would not be good for my health.

Finally we decided to check the cubbyholes round the walls. The plastic cylinders were the kind you might find at a drive-through bank—the kind that shoot up and down the pneumatic tubes. Inside each case was a papyrus scroll. Some looked new. Some looked thousands of years old. Each canister was labeled in hieroglyphs and (fortunately) in English.

"The Book of the Heavenly Cow," Carter read on one. "What kind of name is that? What've you got, The Heavenly Badger?"

"No," I said. "The Book of Slaying Apophis."

Muffin meowed in the corner. When I looked over, her tail was puffed up.

"What's wrong with her?" I asked.

"Apophis was a giant snake monster," Carter muttered. "He was bad news."

Muffin turned and raced up the stairs, back into the Great Room. Cats. No accounting for them.

Carter opened another scroll. "Sadie, look at this."

He'd found a papyrus that was quite long, and most of the text on it seemed to be lines of hieroglyphs.

"Can you read any of this?" Carter asked.

I frowned at the writing, and the odd thing was, I couldn't read it—except for one line at the top. "Only that bit where the title should be. It says...Blood of the Great House. What does that mean?"

"Great house," Carter mused. "What do the words sound like in Egyptian?"

"Per-roh. Oh, it's pharaoh, isn't it? But I thought a pharaoh was a king?"

"It is," Carter said. "The word literally means 'great house,' like the king's mansion. Sort of like referring to the president as 'the White House.' So here it probably means more like Blood of the Pharaohs, all of them, the whole lineage of all the dynasties, not just one guy."

"So why do I care about the pharaohs' blood, and why can't I read any of the rest?"

Carter stared at the lines. Suddenly his eyes widened. "They're names. Look, they're all written inside cartouches."

"Excuse me?" I asked, because cartouche sounded like a rather rude word, and I pride myself on knowing those.

"The circles," Carter explained. "They symbolize magic ropes. They're supposed to protect the holder of the name from evil magic." He eyed me. "And possibly also from other magicians reading their names."

"Oh, you're mental," I said. But I looked at the lines, and saw what he meant. All the other words were protected by cartouches, and I couldn't make sense of them.

"Sadie," Carter said, his voice urgent. He pointed to a cartouche at the very end of the list—the last entry in what looked to be a catalogue of thousands.

Inside the circle were two simple symbols, a basket and a wave.

"KN," Carter announced. "I know this one. It's our name, KANE."

"Missing a few letters, isn't it?"

Carter shook his head. "Egyptians usually didn't write vowels. Only consonants. You have to figure out the vowel sounds from context."

"They really were nutters. So that could be KON or IKON or KNEE or AKNE."

"It could be," Carter agreed. "But it's our name, Kane. I asked Dad to write it for me in hieroglyphs once, and that's how he did it. But why are we in this list? And what is 'blood of the pharaohs'?"

That icy tingle started on the back of my neck. I remembered what Amos had said, about both sides of our family being very ancient. Carter's eyes met mine, and judging from his expression, he was having the same thought.

"There's no way," I protested.

"Must be some kind of joke," he agreed. "Nobody keeps family records that far back."

I swallowed, my throat suddenly very dry. So many odd things had happened to us in the last day, but it was only when I saw our name in that book that I finally began to believe all this mad Egyptian stuff was real. Gods, magicians, monsters...and our family was tied into it.

Ever since breakfast, when it occurred to me that Dad had been trying to bring Mum back from the dead, a horrible emotion had been trying to take hold of me. And it wasn't dread. Yes, the whole idea was creepy, much creepier than the shrine my grandparents kept in the hall cupboard to my dead mother. And yes, I told you I try not to live in the past and nothing could change the fact that my mum was gone. But I'm a liar. The truth was, I'd had one dream ever since I was six: to see my mum again. To actually get to know her, talk to her, go shopping, do anything. Just be with her once so I could have a better memory to hold on to. The feeling I was trying to shake was hope. I knew I was setting myself up for colossal hurt. But if it really were possible to bring her back, then I would've blown up any number of Rosetta Stones to make it happen.

"Let's keep looking," I said.

After a few more minutes, I found a picture of some of animal-headed gods, five in a row, with a starry woman figure arching over them protectively like an umbrella. Dad had released five gods. Hmm.

"Carter," I called. "What's this, then?"

He came to have a look and his eyes lit up.

"That's it!" he announced. "These five...and up here, their mother, Nut."

I laughed. "A goddess named Nut? Is her last name Case?"

"Very funny," Carter said. "She was the goddess of the sky."

He pointed to the painted ceiling—the lady with the blue star-spangled skin, same as in the scroll.

"So what about her?" I asked.

Carter knit his eyebrows. "Something about the Demon Days. It had to do with the birth of these five gods, but it's been a long time since Dad told me the story. This whole scroll is written in hieratic, I think. That's like hieroglyph cursive. Can you read it?"

I shook my head. Apparently, my particular brand of insanity only applied to regular hieroglyphs.

"I wish I could find the story in English," Carter said.

Just then there was a cracking noise behind us. The empty-handed clay statue hopped off his pedestal and marched towards us. Carter and I scrambled to get out of his way, but he walked straight past us, grabbed a cylinder from its cubbyhole and brought it to Carter.

"It's a retrieval shabti," I said. "A clay librarian!"

Carter swallowed nervously and took the cylinder. "Um...thanks."

The statue marched back to his pedestal, jumped on, and hardened again into regular clay.

"I wonder..." I faced the shabti. "Sandwich and chips, please!"

Sadly, none of the statues jumped down to serve me. Perhaps food wasn't allowed in the library.

Carter uncapped the cylinder and unrolled the papyrus. He sighed with relief. "This version is in English."

As he scanned the text, his frown got deeper.

"You don't look happy," I noticed.

"Because I remember the story now. The five gods...if Dad really released them, it isn't good news."

"Hang on," I said. "Start from the beginning."

Carter took a shaky breath. "Okay. So the sky goddess, Nut, was married to the earth god, Geb."

"That would be this chap on the floor?" I tapped my foot on the big green man with the river and hills and forests all over his body.

"Right," Carter said. "Anyway, Geb and Nut wanted to have kids, but the king of the gods, Ra—he was the sun god—heard this bad prophecy that a child of Nut—"

"Child of Nut," I snickered. "Sorry, go on."

"—a child of Geb and Nut would one day replace Ra as king. So when Ra learned that Nut was pregnant, Ra freaked out. He forbade Nut to give birth to her children on any day or night of the year."

I crossed my arms. "So what, she had to stay pregnant forever? That's awfully mean."

Carter shook his head. "Nut figured out a way. She set up a game of dice with the moon god, Khonsu. Every time Khonsu lost, he had to give Nut some of his moonlight. He lost so many times, Nut won enough moonlight to create five new days and tag them on to the end of the year."

"Oh, please," I said. "First, how can you gamble moonlight? And if you did, how could you make extra days out of it?"

"It's a story!" Carter protested. "Anyway, the Egyptian calendar had three hundred and sixty days in the year, just like the three hundred and sixty degrees in a circle. Nut created five days and added them to the end of the year—days that were not part of the regular year."

"The Demon Days," I guessed. "So the myth explains why a year has three hundred and sixty-five days. And I suppose she had her children—"

"During those five days," Carter agreed. "One kid per day."

"Again, how do you have five children in a row, each on a different day?"

"They're gods," Carter said. "They can do stuff like that."

"Makes as much sense as the name Nut. But please, go on."

"So when Ra found out, he was furious, but it was too late. The children were already born. Their names were Osiris—"

"The one Dad was after."

"Then Horus, Set, Isis, and, um..." Carter consulted his scroll. "Nephthys. I always forget that one."

"And the fiery man in the museum said, you have released all five."

"Exactly. What if they were imprisoned together and Dad didn't realize it? They were born together, so maybe they had to be summoned back into the world together. The thing is, one of these guys, Set, was a really bad dude. Like, the villain of Egyptian mythology. The god of evil and chaos and desert storms."

I shivered. "Did he perhaps have something to do with fire?"

Carter pointed to one of the figures in the picture. The god had an animal head, but I couldn't quite make out which sort of animal: Dog? Anteater? Evil bunny rabbit? Whichever it was, his hair and his clothes were bright red.

"The Red Lord," I said.

"Sadie, there's more," Carter said. "Those five days—the Demon Days—were bad luck in Ancient Egypt. You had to be careful, wear good luck charms, and not do anything important or dangerous on those days. And in the British Museum, Dad told Set: They'll stop you before the Demon Days are over."

"Surely you don't think he meant us," I said. "We're supposed to stop this Set character?"

Carter nodded. "And if the last five days of our calendar year still count as the Egyptian Demon Days—they'd start on December 27, the day after tomorrow."

The shabti seemed to be staring at me expectantly, but I had not the slightest idea what to do. Demon Days and evil bunny gods—if I heard one more impossible thing, my head would explode.

And the worst of it? The little insistent voice in the back of my head saying: It's not impossible. To save Dad, we must defeat Set.

As if that had been on my to-do list for Christmas hols. See Dad—check. Develop strange powers—check. Defeat an evil god of chaos—check. The whole idea was mad!

Suddenly there was a loud crash, as if something had broken in the Great Room. Khufu began barking in alarm.

Carter and I locked eyes. Then we ran for the stairs.


	8. Chapter 8

E

**8. Muffin Plays with Knives**

OUR BABOON WAS GOING completely sky goddess—which is to say, nuts.

He swung from column to column, bouncing along the balconies, overturning pots and statues. Then he ran back to the terrace windows, stared outside for a moment, and proceeded to go berserk again.

Muffin was also at the window. She crouched on all fours with her tail twitching as if she were stalking a bird.

"Perhaps it's just a passing flamingo," I suggested hopefully, but I'm not sure Carter could hear me over the screaming baboon.

We ran to the glass doors. At first I didn't see any problem. Then water exploded from the pool, and my heart nearly jumped out of my chest. Two enormous creatures, most definitely not flamingos, were thrashing about with our crocodile, Philip of Macedonia.

I couldn't make out what they were, only that they were fighting Philip two against one. They disappeared under the boiling water, and Khufu ran screaming through the Great Room again, bonking himself on the head with his empty Cheerios box, which I must say was not particularly helpful.

"Longnecks," Carter said incredulously. "Sadie, did you see those things?"

I couldn't find an answer. Then one of the creatures was thrown out of the pool. It slammed into the doors right in front of us, and I jumped back in alarm. On the other side of the glass was the most terrifying animal I'd ever seen. Its body was like a leopard's—lean and sinewy, with golden spotted fur—but its neck was completely wrong. It was green and scaly and at least as long as the rest of its body. It had a cat's head, but no normal cat's. When it turned its glowing red eyes towards us, it howled, showing a forked tongue and fangs dripping with green venom.

I realized my legs were shaking and I was making a very undignified whimpering sound.

The cat-serpent jumped back into the pool to join its companion in beating up Philip, who spun and snapped but seemed unable to hurt his attackers.

"We have to help Philip!" I cried. "He'll be killed!"

I reached for the door handle, but Muffin growled at me.

Carter said, "Sadie, no! You heard Amos. We can't open the doors for any reason. The house is protected by magic. Philip will have to beat them on his own."

"But what if he can't? Philip!"

The old crocodile turned. For a second his pink reptilian eye focused on me as if he could sense my concern. Then the cat-snakes bit at his underbelly and Philip rose up so that only the tip of his tail still touched the water. His body began to glow. A low hum filled the air, like an airplane engine starting up. When Philip came down, he slammed into the terrace with all his might.

The entire house shook. Cracks appeared in the concrete terrace outside, and the swimming pool split right down the middle as the far end crumbled into empty space.

"No!" I cried.

But the edge of the terrace ripped free, plunging Philip and the monsters straight into the East River.

My whole body began to tremble. "He sacrificed himself. He killed the monsters."

"Sadie..." Carter's voice was faint. "What if he didn't? What if they come back?"

"Don't say that!"

"I—I recognized them, Sadie. Those creatures. Come on."

"Where?" I demanded, but he ran straight back to the library.

Carter marched up to the shabti who'd helped us before. "Bring me the...gah, what's it called?"

"What?" I asked.

"Something Dad showed me. It's a big stone plate or something. Had a picture of the first pharaoh, the guy who united Upper and Lower Egypt into one kingdom. His name..." His eyes lit up. "Narmer! Bring me the Narmer Plate!"

Nothing happened.

"No," Carter decided. "Not a plate. It was...one of those things that holds paint. A palette. Bring me the Narmer Palette!"

The empty-handed shabti didn't move, but across the room, the statue with the little hook came to life. He jumped off his pedestal and disappeared in a cloud of dust. A heartbeat later, he reappeared on the table. At his feet was a wedge of flat gray stone, shaped like a shield and about as long as my forearm.

"No!" Carter protested. "I meant a picture of it! Oh great, I think this is the real artifact. The shabti must've stolen it from the Cairo Museum. We've got to return—"

"Hang on," I said. "We might as well have a look."

The surface of the stone was carved with the picture of a man smashing another man in the face with what looked like a spoon.

"That's Narmer with the spoon," I guessed. "Angry because the other bloke stole his breakfast cereal?"

Carter shook his head. "He's conquering his enemies and uniting Egypt. See his hat? That's the crown of Lower Egypt, before the two countries united."

"The bit that looks like a bowling pin?"

"You're impossible," Carter grumbled.

"He looks like Dad, doesn't he?"

"Sadie, be serious!"

"I am serious. Look at his profile."

Carter decided to ignore me. He examined the stone like he was afraid to touch it. "I need to see the back but I don't want to turn it over. We might damage—"

I grabbed the stone and flipped it over.

"Sadie! You could've broken it!"

"That's what mend spells are for, yes?"

We examined the back of the stone, and I had to admit I was impressed by Carter's memory. Two cat-snake monsters stood in the center of the palette, their necks entwined. On either side, Egyptian men with ropes were trying to capture the creatures.

"They're called serpopards," Carter said. "Serpent leopards."

"Fascinating," I said. "But what are serpopards?"

"No one knows exactly. Dad thought they were creatures of chaos—very bad news, and they've been around forever. This stone is one of the oldest artifacts from Egypt. Those pictures were carved five thousand years ago."

"So why are five-thousand-year-old monsters attacking our house?"

"Last night, in Phoenix, the fiery man ordered his servants to capture us. He said to send the longnecks first."

I had a metallic taste in my mouth, and I wished I hadn't chewed my last piece of gum. "Well...good thing they're at the bottom of the East River."

Just then Khufu rushed into the library, screaming and slapping his head.

"Suppose I shouldn't have said that," I muttered.

Carter told the shabti to return the Narmer Palette, and both statue and stone disappeared. Then we followed the baboon upstairs.

The serpopards were back, their fur wet and slimy from the river, and they weren't happy. They prowled the broken ledge of the terrace, their snake necks whipping round as they sniffed the doors, looking for a way in. They spit poison that steamed and bubbled on the glass. Their forked tongues darted in and out.

"Agh, agh!" Khufu picked up Muffin, who was sitting on the sofa, and offered me the cat.

"I really don't think that will help," I told him.

"AGH!" Khufu insisted.

Neither Muffin nor cat ended in -o, so I guessed Khufu was not trying to offer me a snack, but I didn't know what he was on about. I took the cat just to shut him up.

"Meow?" Muffin looked up at me.

"It'll be all right," I promised, trying not to sound scared out of my mind. "The house is protected by magic."

"Sadie," Carter said. "They've found something."

The serpopards had converged at the left-hand door and were intently sniffing the handle.

"Isn't it locked?" I asked.

Both monsters smashed their ugly faces against the glass. The door shuddered. Blue hieroglyphs glowed along the doorframe, but their light was faint.

"I don't like this," Carter murmured.

I prayed that the monsters would give up. Or that perhaps Philip of Macedonia would climb back to the terrace (do crocodiles climb?) and renew the fight.

Instead, the monsters smashed their heads against the glass again. This time a web of cracks appeared. The blue hieroglyphs flickered and died.

"AGH!" Khufu screamed. He waved his hand vaguely at the cat.

"Maybe if I try the ha-di spell," I said.

Carter shook his head. "You almost fainted after you blew up those doors. I don't want you passing out, or worse."

Carter once again surprised me. He tugged a strange sword from one of Amos's wall displays. The blade had an odd crescent-moon curve and looked horribly impractical.

"You can't be serious," I said.

"Unless—unless you've got a better idea," he stammered, his face beading with perspiration. "It's me, you, and the baboon against those things."

I'm sure Carter was trying to be brave in his own extremely unbrave way, but he was shaking worse than I was. If anyone was going to pass out, I feared it would be him, and I didn't fancy him doing that while holding a sharp object.

Then the serpopards struck a third time, and the door shattered. We backed up to the foot of Thoth's statue as the creatures stalked into the great room. Khufu threw his basketball, which bounced harmlessly off the first monster's head. Then he launched himself at the serpopard.

"Khufu, don't!" Carter yelled.

But the baboon sank his fangs into the monster's neck. The serpopard lashed around, trying to bite him. Khufu leaped off, but the monster was quick. It used its head like a bat and smacked poor Khufu in midair, sending him straight through the shattered door, over the broken terrace, and into the void.

I wanted to sob, but there wasn't time. The serpopards came toward us. We couldn't outrun them. Carter raised his sword. I pointed my hand at the first monster and tried to speak the ha-di spell, but my voice stuck in my throat.

"Meow!" Muffin said, more insistently. Why was the cat still nestled in my arm and not running away in terror?

Then I remembered something Amos had said: Muffin will protect you. Was that what Khufu had been trying to remind me? It seemed impossible, but I stammered, "M-muffin, I order you to protect us."

I tossed her on the floor. Just for a moment, the silver pendant on her collar seemed to gleam. Then the cat arched her back leisurely, sat down, and began licking a front paw. Well, really, what was I expecting—heroics?

The two red-eyed monsters bared their fangs. They raised their heads and prepared to strike—and an explosion of dry air blasted through the room. It was so powerful, it knocked Carter and me to the floor. The serpopards stumbled and backed away.

I staggered to my feet and realized that the center of the blast had been Muffin. My cat was no longer there. In her place was a woman—small and lithe like a gymnast. Her jet-black hair was tied in a ponytail. She wore a skintight leopard-skin jumpsuit and Muffin's pendant around her neck.

She turned and grinned at me, and her eyes were still Muffin's—yellow with black feline pupils. "About time," she chided.

The serpopards got over their shock and charged the cat woman. Their heads struck with lightning speed. They should've ripped her in two, but the cat lady leaped straight up, flipping three times, and landed above them, perched on the mantel.

She flexed her wrists, and two enormous knives shot from her sleeves into her hands. "A-a-ah, fun!"

The monsters charged. She launched herself between them, dancing and dodging with incredible grace, letting them lash at her futilely while she threaded their necks together. When she stepped away, the serpopards were hopelessly intertwined. The more they struggled, the tighter the knots became. They trampled back and forth, knocking over furniture and roaring in frustration.

"Poor things," the cat woman purred. "Let me help."

Her knives flashed, and the two monsters' heads thudded to the floor at her feet. Their bodies collapsed and dissolved into enormous piles of sand.

"So much for my playthings," the woman said sadly. "From sand they come, and to sand they return."

She turned towards us, and the knives shot back into her sleeves. "Carter, Sadie, we should leave. Worse will be coming."

Carter made a choking sound. "Worse? Who—how—what—"

"All in good time." The woman stretched her arms above her head with great satisfaction. "So good to be in human form again! Now, Sadie, can you open us a door through the Duat, please?"

I blinked. "Um...no. I mean—I don't know how."

The woman narrowed her eyes, clearly disappointed. "Shame. We'll need more power, then. An obelisk."

"But that's in London," I protested. "We can't—"

"There's a nearer one in Central Park. I try to avoid Manhattan, but this is an emergency. We'll just pop over and open a portal."

"A portal to where?" I demanded. "Who are you, and why are you my cat?"

The woman smiled. "For now, we just want a portal out of danger. As for my name, it's not Muffin, thank you very much. It's—"

"Bast," Carter interrupted. "Your pendant—it's the symbol of Bast, goddess of cats. I thought it was just decoration but...that's you, isn't it?"

"Very good, Carter," Bast said. "Now come, while we can still make it out of here alive."


	9. Chapter 9

R

**9. We Run from Four Guys in Skirts**

SO, YEAH. OUR CAT WAS A GODDESS.

What else is new?

She didn't give us much time to talk about it. She ordered me to the library to grab my dad's magic kit, and when I came back she was arguing with Sadie about Khufu and Philip.

"We have to search for them!" Sadie insisted.

"They'll be fine," said Bast. "However, we will not be, unless we leave now."

I raised my hand. "Um, excuse me, Miss Goddess Lady? Amos told us the house was—"

"Safe?" Bast snorted. "Carter, the defenses were too easily breached. Someone sabotaged them."

"What do you mean? Who—"

"Only a magician of the House could've done it."

"Another magician?" I asked. "Why would another magician want to sabotage Amos's house?"

"Oh, Carter," Bast sighed. "So young, so innocent. Magicians are devious creatures. Could be a million reasons why one would backstab another, but we don't have time to discuss it. Now, come on!"

She grabbed our arms and led us out the front door. She'd sheathed her knives, but she still had some wicked sharp claws for fingernails that hurt as they dug into my skin. As soon as we stepped outside, the cold wind stung my eyes. We climbed down a long flight of metal stairs into the industrial yard that surrounded the factory.

Dad's workbag was heavy on my shoulder. The curved sword I'd strapped across my back felt cold against my thin linen clothes. I'd started to sweat during the serpopard attack, and now my perspiration felt like it was turning to ice.

I looked around for more monsters, but the yard seemed abandoned. Old construction equipment lay in rusting heaps—a bulldozer, a crane with a wrecking ball, a couple of cement mixers. Piles of sheet metal and stacks of crates made a maze of obstacles between the house and the street a few hundred yards away.

We were about halfway across the yard when an old gray tomcat stepped in our path. One of his ears was torn. His left eye was swollen shut. Judging from his scars, he'd spent most of his life fighting.

Bast crouched and stared at the cat. He looked up at her calmly.

"Thank you," Bast said.

The old tomcat trotted off toward the river.

"What was that about?" Sadie asked.

"One of my subjects, offering help. He'll spread the news about our predicament. Soon every cat in New York will be on alert."

"He was so battered," Sadie said. "If he's your subject, couldn't you heal him?"

"And take away his marks of honor? A cat's battle scars are part of his identity. I couldn't—" Suddenly Bast tensed. She dragged us behind a stack of crates.

"What is it?" I whispered.

She flexed her wrists and her knives slid into her hands. She peeped over the top of the crates, every muscle in her body trembling. I tried to see what she was looking at, but there was nothing except the old wrecking-ball crane.

Bast's mouth twitched with excitement. Her eyes were fixed on the huge metal ball. I'd seen kittens look like that when they stalked catnip toy mice, or pieces of string, or rubber balls...Balls? No. Bast was an ancient goddess. Surely she wouldn't—

"This could be it." She shifted her weight. "Stay very very still."

"There's no one there," Sadie hissed.

I started to say, "Um..."

Bast lunged over the crates. She flew thirty feet through the air, knives flashing, and landed on the wrecking ball with such force that she broke the chain. The cat goddess and the huge metal sphere smashed into the dirt and went rolling across the yard.

"Rowww!" Bast wailed. The wrecking ball rolled straight over her, but she didn't appear hurt. She leaped off and pounced again. Her knives sliced through the metal like wet clay. Within seconds, the wrecking ball was reduced to a mound of scraps.

Bast sheathed her blades. "Safe now!"

Sadie and I looked at each other.

"You saved us from a metal ball," Sadie said.

"You never know," Bast said. "It could've been hostile."

Just then a deep boom! shook the ground. I looked back at the mansion. Tendrils of blue fire curled from the top windows.

"Come on," Bast said. "Our time is up!"

I thought maybe she'd whisk us off by magic, or at least hail a taxi. Instead, Bast borrowed a silver Lexus convertible.

"Oh, yes," she purred. "I like this one! Come along, children."

"But this isn't yours," I pointed out.

"My dear, I'm a cat. Everything I see is mine." She touched the ignition and the keyhole sparked. The engine began to purr. [No, Sadie. Not like a cat, like an engine.]

"Bast," I said, "you can't just—"

Sadie elbowed me. "We'll work out how to return it later, Carter. Right now we've got an emergency."

She pointed back toward the mansion. Blue flames and smoke now billowed from every window. But that wasn't the scary part—coming down the stairs were four men carrying a large box, like an oversize coffin with long handles sticking out at both ends. The box was covered with a black shroud and looked big enough for at least two bodies. The four men wore only kilts and sandals. Their coppery skin glinted in the sun as if made of metal.

"Oh, that's bad," Bast said. "In the car, please."

I decided not to ask questions. Sadie beat me to the shotgun seat so I climbed in back. The four metallic guys with the box were racing across the yard, coming straight for us at an unbelievable speed. Before I even had my seat belt on, Bast hit the gas.

We tore through the streets of Brooklyn, weaving insanely through traffic, riding over sidewalks, narrowly missing pedestrians.

Bast drove with reflexes that were...well, catlike. Any human trying to drive so fast would've had a dozen wrecks, but she got us safely onto the Williamsburg Bridge.

I thought for sure we must've lost our pursuers, but when I looked back, the four copper men with the black box were weaving in and out of traffic. They appeared to be jogging at a normal pace, but they passed cars that were doing fifty. Their bodies blurred like choppy images in an old movie, as if they were out of sync with the regular stream of time.

"What are they?" I asked. "Shabti?"

"No, carriers." Bast glanced in the rearview mirror. "Summoned straight from the Duat. They'll stop at nothing to find their victims, throw them in the sedan—"

"The what?" Sadie interrupted.

"The large box," Bast said. "It's a kind of carriage. The carriers capture you, beat you senseless, throw you in, and carry you back to their master. They never lose their prey, and they never give up."

"But what do they want us for?"

"Trust me," Bast growled, "you don't want to know."

I thought about the fiery man last night in Phoenix—how he'd fried one of his servants into a grease spot. I was pretty sure I didn't want to meet him face-to-face again.

"Bast," I said, "if you're a goddess, can't you just snap your fingers and disintegrate those guys? Or wave your hand and teleport us away?"

"Wouldn't that be nice? But my power in this host is limited."

"You mean Muffin?" Sadie asked. "But you're not a cat anymore."

"She's still my host, Sadie, my anchor on this side of the Duat—and a very imperfect one. Your call for help allowed me to assume human shape, but that alone takes a great deal of power. Besides, even when I'm in a powerful host, Set's magic is stronger than mine."

"Could you please say something I actually understand?" I pleaded.

"Carter, we don't have time for a full discussion on gods and hosts and the limits of magic! We have to get you to safety."

Bast floored the accelerator and shot up the middle of the bridge. The four carriers with the sedan raced after us, blurring the air as they moved, but no cars swerved to avoid them. No one panicked or even looked at them.

"How can people not see them?" I said. "Don't they notice four copper men in skirts running up the bridge with a weird black box?"

Bast shrugged. "Cats can hear many sounds you can't. Some animals see things in the ultraviolet spectrum that are invisible to humans. Magic is similar. Did you notice the mansion when you first arrived?"

"Well...no."

"And you are born to magic," Bast said. "Imagine how hard it would be for a regular mortal."

"Born to magic?" I remembered what Amos had said about our family being in the House of Life for a long time. "If magic, like, runs in the family, why haven't I ever been able to do it before?"

Bast smiled in the mirror. "Your sister understands."

Sadie's ears turned red. "No, I don't! I still can't believe you're a goddess. All these years, you've been eating crunchy treats, sleeping on my head—"

"I made a deal with your father," Bast said. "He let me remain in the world as long as I assumed a minor form, a normal housecat, so I could protect and watch over you. It was the least I could do after—" She stopped abruptly.

A horrible thought occurred to me. My stomach fluttered, and it had nothing to do with how fast we were going. "After our mom's death?" I guessed.

Bast stared straight ahead out the windshield.

"That's it, isn't it?" I said. "Dad and Mom did some kind of magic ritual at Cleopatra's Needle. Something went wrong. Our mom died and...and they released you?"

"That's not important right now," Bast said. "The point is I agreed to look after Sadie. And I will."

She was hiding something. I was sure of it, but her tone made it clear that the subject was closed.

"If you gods are so powerful and helpful," I said, "why does the House of Life forbid magicians from summoning you?"

Bast swerved into the fast lane. "Magicians are paranoid. Your best hope is to stay with me. We'll get as far away as possible from New York. Then we'll get help and challenge Set."

"What help?" Sadie asked.

Bast raised an eyebrow. "Why, we'll summon more gods, of course."


	10. Chapter 10

CARTER

**10. Bast Goes Green**

[Sadie, stop it! Yeah, I'm getting to that part.] Sorry, she keeps trying to distract me by setting fire to my—never mind. Where was I?

We barreled off the Williamsburg Bridge into Manhattan and headed north on Clinton Street.

"They're still following," Sadie warned.

Sure enough, the carriers were only a block behind us, weaving around cars and trampling over sidewalk displays of tourist junk.

"We'll buy some time." Bast growled deep in her throat—a sound so low and powerful it made my teeth buzz. She yanked the wheel and swerved right onto East Houston.

I looked back. Just as the carriers turned the corner, a horde of cats materialized all around them. Some jumped from windows. Some ran from the sidewalks and alleys. Some crawled from the storm drains. All of them converged on the carriers in a wave of fur and claws—climbing up their copper legs, scratching their backs, clinging to their faces, and weighing down the sedan box. The carriers stumbled, dropping the box. They began blindly swatting at the cats. Two cars swerved to avoid the animals and collided, blocking the entire street, and the carriers went down under the mass of angry felines. We turned onto the FDR Drive, and the scene disappeared from view.

"Nice," I admitted.

"It won't hold them long," Bast said. "Now—Central Park!"

Bast ditched the Lexus at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

"We'll run from here," she said. "It's just behind the museum."

When she said run, she meant it. Sadie and I had to sprint to keep up, and Bast wasn't even breaking a sweat. She didn't stop for little things like hot dog stands or parked cars. Anything under ten feet tall she leaped over with ease, leaving us to scramble around the obstacles as best we could.

We ran into the park on the East Drive. As soon as we turned north, the obelisk loomed above us. A little over seventy feet tall, it looked like an exact copy of the needle in London. It was tucked away on a grassy hill, so it actually felt isolated, which is hard to achieve in the center of New York. There was no one around except a couple of joggers farther down the path. I could hear the traffic behind us on Fifth Avenue, but even that seemed far away.

We stopped at the obelisk's base. Bast sniffed the air as if smelling for trouble. Once I was standing still, I realized just how cold I was. The sun was directly overhead, but the wind ripped right through my borrowed linen clothes.

"I wish I'd grabbed something warmer," I muttered. "A wool coat would be nice."

"No, it wouldn't," Bast said, scanning the horizon. "You're dressed for magic."

Sadie shivered. "We have to freeze to be magical?"

"Magicians avoid animal products," Bast said absently. "Fur, leather, wool, any of that. The residual life aura can interfere with spells."

"My boots seem all right," Sadie noted.

"Leather," Bast said with distaste. "You may have a higher tolerance, so a bit of leather won't bother your magic. I don't know. But linen clothing is always best, or cotton—plant material. At any rate, Sadie, I think we're clear for the moment. There's a window of auspicious time starting right now, at eleven thirty, but it won't last long. Get started."

Sadie blinked. "Me? Why me? You're the goddess!"

"I'm not good at portals," Bast said. "Cats are protectors. Just control your emotions. Panic or fear will kill a spell. We have to get out of here before Set summons the other gods to his cause."

I frowned. "You mean Set's got, like, other evil gods on speed dial?"

Bast glanced nervously toward the trees. "Evil and good may not be the best way to think of it, Carter. As a magician, you must think about chaos and order. Those are the two forces that control the universe. Set is all about chaos."

"But what about the other gods Dad released?" I persisted. "Aren't they good guys? Isis, Osiris, Horus, Nephthys—where are they?"

Bast fixed her eyes on me. "That's a good question, Carter."

A Siamese cat broke through the bushes and ran up to Bast. They looked at each other for a moment. Then the Siamese dashed away.

"The carriers are close," Bast announced. "And something else...something much stronger, closing in from the east. I think the carriers' master has grown impatient."

My heart did a flip. "Set is coming?"

"No," Bast said. "Perhaps a minion. Or an ally. My cats are having trouble describing what they're seeing, and I don't want to find out. Sadie, now is the time. Just concentrate on opening a gateway to the Duat. I'll keep off the attackers. Combat magic is my specialty."

"Like what you did in the mansion?" I asked.

Bast showed her pointed teeth. "No, that was just combat."

The woods rustled, and the carriers emerged. Their sedan chair's shroud had been shredded by cat claws. The carriers themselves were scratched and dented. One walked with a limp, his leg bent backward at the knee. Another had a car fender wrapped around his neck.

The four metal men carefully set down their sedan chair. They looked at us and drew golden metal clubs from their belts.

"Sadie, get to work," Bast ordered. "Carter, you're welcome to help me."

The cat goddess unsheathed her knives. Her body began to glow with a green hue. An aura surrounded her, growing larger, like a bubble of energy, and lifting her off the ground. The aura took shape until Bast was encased in a holographic projection about four times her normal size. It was an image of the goddess in her ancient form—a twenty-foot-tall woman with the head of a cat. Floating in midair in the center of the hologram, Bast stepped forward. The giant cat goddess moved with her. It didn't seem possible that a see-through image could have substance, but its foot shook the ground. Bast raised her hand. The glowing green warrior did the same, unsheathing claws as long and sharp as rapiers. Bast swiped the sidewalk in front of her and shredded the pavement to concrete ribbons. She turned and smiled at me. The giant cat's head did likewise, baring horrible fangs that could've bitten me in half.

"This," Bast said, "is combat magic."

At first I was too stunned to do anything but watch as Bast launched her green war machine into the middle of the carriers.

She slashed one carrier to pieces with a single swipe, then stepped on another and flattened him into a metal pancake. The other two carriers attacked her holographic legs, but their metal clubs bounced harmlessly off the ghostly light with showers of sparks.

Meanwhile Sadie stood in front of the obelisk with her arms raised, shouting: "Open, you stupid piece of rock!"

Finally I drew my sword. My hands were shaking. I didn't want to charge into battle, but I felt like I should help. And if I had to fight, I figured having a twenty-foot-tall glowing cat warrior on my side was the way to do it. "Sadie, I—I'm going to help Bast. Keep trying!"

"I am!"

I ran forward just as Bast sliced the other two carriers apart like loaves of bread. With relief, I thought: Well, that's it.

Then all four carriers began to re-form. The flat one peeled himself off the pavement. The sliced ones' pieces clicked together like magnets, and the carriers stood up good as new.

"Carter, help me hack them apart!" Bast called. "They need to be in smaller pieces!"

I tried to stay out of Bast's way as she sliced and stomped. Then as soon as she disabled a carrier, I went to work chopping its remains into smaller pieces. They seemed more like Play-Doh than metal, because my blade mashed them up pretty easily.

Another few minutes and I was surrounded by piles of coppery rubble. Bast made a glowing fist and smashed the sedan into kindling.

"That wasn't so hard," I said. "What were we running for?"

Inside her glowing shell, Bast's face was coated with sweat. It hadn't occurred to me that a goddess could get tired, but her magic avatar must've taken a lot of effort.

"We're not safe yet," she warned. "Sadie, how's it coming?"

"It's not," Sadie complained. "Isn't there another way?"

Before Bast could answer, the bushes rustled with a new sound—like rain, except more slithery.

A chill ran up my back. "What...what is that?"

"No," Bast murmured. "It can't be. Not her."

Then the bushes exploded. A thousand brown creepy-crawlies poured from the woods in a carpet of grossness—all pincers and stinging tails.

I wanted to yell, "Scorpions!" But my voice wouldn't work. My legs started trembling. I hate scorpions. They're everywhere in Egypt. Many times I'd found them in my hotel bed or shower. Once I'd even found one in my sock.

"Sadie!" Bast called urgently.

"Nothing!" Sadie moaned.

The scorpions kept coming—thousands upon thousands. Out of the woods a woman appeared, walking fearlessly through the middle of the arachnids. She wore brown robes with gold jewelry glinting around her neck and arms. Her long black hair was cut Ancient Egyptian–style with a strange crown on top. Then I realized it wasn't a crown—she had a live, supersize scorpion nesting on her head. Millions of the little nasties swirled around her like she was the center of their storm.

"Serqet," Bast growled.

"The scorpion goddess," I guessed. Maybe that should've terrified me, but I was already pretty much at my maximum. "Can you take her?"

Bast's expression didn't reassure me.

"Carter, Sadie," she said, "this is going to get ugly. Get to the museum. Find the temple. It may protect you."

"What temple?" I asked.

"And what about you?" Sadie added.

"I'll be fine. I'll catch up." But when Bast looked at me, I could tell she wasn't sure. She was just buying us time.

"Go!" she ordered. She turned her giant green cat warrior to face the mass of scorpions.

Embarrassing truth? In the face of those scorpions, I didn't even pretend to be brave. I grabbed Sadie's arm and we ran.


	11. Chapter 11

E

**11. We Meet the Human Flamethrower**

RIGHT, I'M TAKING THE MICROPHONE. There is no chance Carter would tell this part properly, as it's about Zia. [Shut up, Carter. You know it's true.]

Oh, who is Zia? Sorry, getting ahead of myself.

We raced to the entrance of the museum, and I had no idea why, except that a giant glowing cat woman had told us to. Now, you must realize I was already devastated by everything that had happened. First, I'd lost my father. Second, my loving grandparents had kicked me out of the flat. Then I'd discovered I was apparently "blood of the pharaohs," born to a magical family, and all sorts of rubbish that sounded quite impressive but only brought me loads of trouble. And as soon as I'd found a new home—a mansion with proper breakfast and friendly pets and quite a nice room for me, by the way—Uncle Amos disappeared, my lovely new crocodile and baboon friends were tossed in a river, and the mansion was set on fire. And if that wasn't enough, my faithful cat Muffin had decided to engage in a hopeless battle with a swarm of scorpions.

Do you call it a "swarm" for scorpions? A herd? A gaggle? Oh, never mind.

The point is I couldn't believe I'd been asked to open a magic doorway when clearly I had no such skill, and now my brother was dragging me away. I felt like an utter failure. [And no comments from you, Carter. As I recall, you weren't much help at the time, either.]

"We can't just leave Bast!" I shouted. "Look!"

Carter kept running, dragging me along, but I could see quite clearly what was happening back at the obelisk. A mass of scorpions had crawled up Bast's glowing green legs and were wriggling into the hologram like it was gelatin. Bast smashed hundreds of them with her feet and fists, but there were simply too many. Soon they were up to her waist, and her ghostly shell began to flicker. Meanwhile, the brown-robed goddess advanced slowly, and I had a feeling she would be worse than any number of scorpions.

Carter pulled me through a row of bushes and I lost sight of Bast. We burst onto Fifth Avenue, which seemed ridiculously normal after the magic battle. We ran down the sidewalk, shoved through a knot of pedestrians, and climbed the steps of the Met.

A banner above the entrance announced some sort of special Christmas event, which I suppose is why the museum was open on a holiday, but I didn't bother reading the details. We pushed straight inside.

What did it look like? Well, it was a museum: huge entry hall, lots of columns and so on. I can't claim I spent much time admiring the decor. I do remember it had queues for the ticket windows, because we ran right past them. There were also security guards, because they yelled at us as we dashed into the exhibits. By luck, we ended up in the Egyptian area, in front of a reconstructed tomb sort of place with narrow corridors. Carter probably could've told you what the structure was supposed to be, but honestly I didn't care.

"Come on," I said.

We slipped inside the exhibit, which proved quite enough to lose the security guards, or perhaps they had better things to do than pursue naughty children.

When we popped out again, we sneaked around until we were sure we weren't being followed. The Egypt wing wasn't crowded—just a few clumps of old people and a foreign tour group with a guide explaining a sarcophagus in French. "Et voici la momie!"

Strangely, no one seemed to notice the enormous sword on Carter's back, which surely must've been a security issue (and much more interesting than the exhibits). A few old people did give us odd looks, but I suspect that was because we were dressed in linen pajamas, drenched in sweat, and covered in grass and leaves. My hair was probably a nightmare as well.

I found an empty room and pulled Carter aside. The glass cases were full of shabti. A few days earlier I wouldn't have given them a second thought. Now, I kept glancing at the statues, sure they'd come to life any minute and try to bash me on the head.

"What now?" I asked Carter. "Did you see any temple?"

"No." He knit his eyebrows as if trying hard to remember. "I think there's a rebuilt temple down that hall...or is that in the Brooklyn Museum? Maybe the one in Munich? Sorry, I've been to so many museums with Dad that they all get mixed together."

I sighed in exasperation. "Poor boy, forced to travel the world, skip school, and spend time with Dad while I get a whole two days a year with him!"

"Hey!" Carter turned on me with surprising force. "You get a home! You get friends and a normal life and don't wake up each morning wondering what country you're in! You don't—"

The glass case next to us shattered, spraying glass at our feet.

Carter looked at me, bewildered. "Did we just—"

"Like my exploding birthday cake," I grumbled, trying not to let on how startled I was. "You need to control your temper."

"Me?"

Alarms began to blare. Red lights pulsed through the corridor. A garbled voice came on the loudspeaker and said something about proceeding calmly to the exits. The French tour group ran past us, screaming in panic, followed by a crowd of remarkably fast old people with walkers and canes.

"Let's finish arguing later, shall we?" I told Carter. "Come on!"

We ran down another corridor, and the sirens died as suddenly as they'd started. The blood-red lights kept pulsing in eerie silence. Then I heard it: the slithering, clacking sounds of scorpions.

"What about Bast?" My voice choked up. "Is she—"

"Don't think about it," Carter said, though, judging from his face, that's exactly what he was thinking about. "Keep moving!"

Soon we were hopelessly lost. As far as I could tell, the Egyptian part of the museum was designed to be as confusing as possible, with dead ends and halls that doubled back on themselves. We passed hieroglyphic scrolls, gold jewelry, sarcophagi, statues of pharaohs, and huge chunks of limestone. Why would someone display a rock? Aren't there enough of those in the world?

We saw no one, but the slithering sounds grew louder no matter which way we ran. Finally I rounded a corner and smacked straight into someone.

I yelped and scrambled backwards, only to stumble into Carter. We both fell on our bums in a most unflattering way. It's a miracle Carter didn't impale himself on his own sword.

At first I didn't recognize the girl standing in front of us, which seems strange, looking back on it. Perhaps she was using some sort of magic aura, or perhaps I just didn't want to believe it was her.

She looked a bit taller than me. Probably older, too, but not by much. Her black hair was trimmed along her jaw line and longer in the front so that it swept over her eyes. She had caramel-colored skin and pretty, vaguely Arab features. Her eyes—lined in black kohl, Egyptian style—were a strange amber color that was either quite beautiful or a bit scary; I couldn't decide which. She had a backpack on her shoulder, and wore sandals and loose-fitting linen clothes like ours. She looked as if she were on her way to a martial arts class. God, now that I think of it, we probably looked the same way. How embarrassing.

I slowly began to realize I'd seen her before. She was the girl with the knife from the British Museum. Before I could say anything, Carter sprang to his feet. He moved in front of me and brandished his sword as if trying to protect me. Can you believe the nerve?

"Get—get back!" he stammered.

The girl reached into her sleeve and produced a curved white piece of ivory—an Egyptian wand.

She flicked it to one side, and Carter's sword flew out of his hands and clattered to the floor.

"Don't embarrass yourself," the girl said sternly. "Where is Amos?"

Carter looked too stunned to speak. The girl turned towards me. Her golden eyes were both beautiful and scary, I decided, and I didn't like her a bit.

"Well?" she demanded.

I didn't see why I needed to tell her a bloody thing, but an uncomfortable pressure started building in my chest, like a burp trying to get free. I heard myself say, "Amos is gone. He left this morning."

"And the cat demon?"

"That's my cat," I said. "And she's a goddess, not a demon. She saved us from the scorpions!"

Carter unfroze. He snatched up his sword and pointed it at the girl again. Full credit for persistence, I suppose.

"Who are you?" he demanded. "What do you want?"

"My name is Zia Rashid." She tilted her head as if listening.

Right on cue, the entire building rumbled. Dust sprinkled from the ceiling, and the slithering sounds of scorpions doubled in volume behind us.

"And right now," Zia continued, sounding a bit disappointed, "I must save your miserable lives. Let's go."

I suppose we could've refused, but our choices seemed to be Zia or the scorpions, so we ran after her.

She passed a case full of statues and casually tapped the glass with her wand. Tiny granite pharaohs and limestone gods stirred at her command. They hopped off their pedestals and crashed through the glass. Some wielded weapons. Others simply cracked their stone knuckles. They let us pass, but stared down the corridor behind us as if waiting for the enemy.

"Hurry," Zia told us. "These will only—"

"Buy us time," I guessed. "Yes, we've heard that before."

"You talk too much," Zia said without stopping.

I was about to make a withering retort. Honestly, I would've put her in her place quite properly. But just then we emerged into an enormous room and my voice abandoned me.

"Whoa," Carter said.

I couldn't help agreeing with him. The place was extremely whoa.

The room was the size of a football stadium. One wall was made completely of glass and looked out on the park. In the middle of the room, on a raised platform, an ancient building had been reconstructed. There was a freestanding stone gateway about eight meters tall, and behind that an open courtyard and square structure made of uneven sandstone blocks carved all over on the outside with images of gods and pharaohs and hieroglyphs. Flanking the building's entrance were two columns bathed in eerie light.

"An Egyptian temple," I guessed.

"The Temple of Dendur," Zia said. "Actually it was built by the Romans—"

"When they occupied Egypt," Carter said, like this was delightful information. "Augustus commissioned it."

"Yes," Zia said.

"Fascinating," I murmured. "Would you two like to be left alone with a history textbook?"

Zia scowled at me. "At any rate, the temple was dedicated to Isis, so it will have enough power to open a gate."

"To summon more gods?" I asked.

Zia's eyes flashed angrily. "Accuse me of that again, and I will cut out your tongue. I meant a gateway to get you out of here."

I felt completely lost, but I was getting used to that. We followed Zia up the steps and through the temple's stone gateway.

The courtyard was empty, abandoned by the fleeing museum visitors, which made it feel quite creepy. Giant carvings of gods stared down at me. Hieroglyphic inscriptions were everywhere, and I was afraid that if I concentrated too hard, I might be able to read them.

Zia stopped at the front steps of the temple. She held up her wand and wrote in the air. A familiar hieroglyph burned between the columns.

Open—the same symbol Dad had used at the Rosetta Stone. I waited for something to blow up, but the hieroglyph simply faded.

Zia opened her backpack. "We'll make our stand here until the gate can be opened."

"Why not just open it now?" Carter asked.

"Portals can only appear at auspicious moments," Zia said. "Sunrise, sunset, midnight, eclipses, astrological alignments, the exact time of a god's birth—"

"Oh, come on," I said. "How can you possibly know all that?"

"It takes years to memorize the complete calendar," Zia said. "But the next auspicious moment is easy: high noon. Ten and a half minutes from now."

She didn't check a watch. I wondered how she knew the time so precisely, but I decided it wasn't the most important question.

"Why should we trust you?" I asked. "As I recall, at the British Museum, you wanted to gut us with a knife."

"That would've been simpler." Zia sighed. "Unfortunately, my superiors think you might be innocents. So for now, I can't kill you. But I also can't allow you to fall into the hands of the Red Lord. And so...you can trust me."

"Well, I'm convinced," I said. "I feel all warm and fuzzy inside."

Zia reached in her bag and took out four little statues—animal-headed men, each about five centimeters tall. She handed them to me. "Put the Sons of Horus around us at the cardinal points."

"Excuse me?"

"North, south, east, west." She spoke slowly, as if I were an idiot.

"I know compass directions! But—"

"That's north." Zia pointed out the wall of glass. "Figure out the rest."

I did what she asked, though I didn't see how the little men would help. Meanwhile, Zia gave Carter a piece of chalk and told him to draw a circle around us, connecting the statues.

"Magic protection," Carter said. "Like what Dad did at the British Museum."

"Yes," I grumbled. "And we saw how well that worked."

Carter ignored me. What else is new? He was so eager to please Zia that he jumped right to the task of drawing his sidewalk art.

Then Zia took something else from her bag—a plain wooden rod like the one our dad had used in London. She spoke a word under her breath, and the rod expanded into a two-meter-long black staff topped with a carved lion's head. She twirled it around single-handedly like a baton—just showing off, I was sure—while holding the wand in her other hand.

Carter finished the chalk circle as the first scorpions appeared at the gallery's entrance.

"How much longer on that gate?" I asked, hoping I didn't sound as terrified as I felt.

"Stay inside the circle no matter what," Zia said. "When the gate opens, jump through. And keep behind me!"

She touched her wand to the chalk circle, spoke another word, and the circle began to glow dark red.

Hundreds of scorpions swarmed towards the temple, turning the floor into a living mass of claws and stingers. Then the woman in brown, Serqet, entered the gallery. She smiled at us coldly.

"Zia," I said, "that's a goddess. She defeated Bast. What chance do you have?"

Zia held up her staff and the carved lion's head burst into flames—a small red fireball so bright, it lit the entire room. "I am a scribe in the House of Life, Sadie Kane. I am trained to fight gods."


	12. Chapter 12

E

**12. A Jump Through the Hourglass**

WELL, THAT WAS ALL VERY IMPRESSIVE, I suppose. You should've seen Carter's face—he looked like an excited puppy. [Oh, stop shoving me. You did!]

But I felt much less sure of Miss Zia "I'm-So-Magical" Rashid when the army of scorpions scuttled towards us. I wouldn't have thought it possible so many scorpions existed in the world, much less in Manhattan. The glowing circle round us seemed like insignificant protection against the millions of arachnids crawling over one another, many layers deep, and the woman in brown, who was even more horrible.

From a distance she looked all right, but as she got closer I saw that Serqet's pale skin glistened like an insect shell. Her eyes were beady black. Her long, dark hair was unnaturally thick, as if made from a million bristling bug antennae. And when she opened her mouth, sideways mandibles snapped and retracted outside her regular human teeth.

The goddess stopped about twenty meters away, studying us. Her hateful black eyes fixed on Zia. "Give me the younglings."

Her voice was harsh and raspy, as if she hadn't spoken in centuries.

Zia crossed her staff and wand. "I am mistress of the elements, Scribe of the First Nome. Leave or be destroyed."

Serqet clicked her mandibles in a gruesome foamy grin. Some of her scorpions advanced, but when the first one touched the glowing lines of our protective circle, it sizzled and turned to ashes. Mark my words, nothing smells worse than burned scorpion.

The rest of the horrible things retreated, swirling round the goddess and crawling up her legs. With a shudder, I realized they were wriggling into her robes. After a few seconds, all the scorpions had disappeared into the brown folds of her clothes.

The air seemed to darken behind Serqet, as if she were casting an enormous shadow. Then the darkness rose up and took the form of a massive scorpion tail, arcing over Serqet's head. It lashed down at us at blazing speed, but Zia raised her wand and the sting glanced off the ivory tip with a hissing sound. Steam rolled off Zia's wand, smelling of sulfur.

Zia pointed her staff towards the goddess, engulfing her body in fire. Serqet screamed and staggered backwards, but the fire died almost instantly. It left Serqet's robes seared and smoking, but the goddess looked more enraged than hurt.

"Your days are past, magician. The House is weak. Lord Set will lay waste to this land."

Zia threw her wand like a boomerang. It smashed into the shadowy scorpion tail and exploded in a blinding flash of light. Serqet lurched back and averted her eyes, and as she did, Zia reached into her sleeve and brought out something small—something closed inside her fist.

The wand was a diversion, I thought. A magician's sleight of hand.

Then Zia did something reckless: she leaped out of the magic circle—the very thing she'd warned us not to do.

"Zia!" Carter called. "The gate!"

I glanced behind me, and my heart almost stopped. The space between the two columns at the temple's entrance was now a vertical tunnel of sand, as if I were looking into the funnel of an enormous sideways hourglass. I could feel it tugging at me, pulling me towards it with magical gravity.

"I'm not going in there," I insisted, but another flash of light brought my attention back to Zia.

She and the goddess were involved in a dangerous dance. Zia twirled and spun with her fiery staff, and everywhere she passed, she left a trail of flames burning in the air. I had to admit it: Zia was almost as graceful and impressive as Bast.

I had the oddest desire to help. I wanted—very badly, in fact—to step outside the circle and engage in combat. It was a completely mad urge, of course. What could I possibly have done? But still I felt I shouldn't—or couldn't—jump through the gate without helping Zia.

"Sadie!" Carter grabbed me and pulled me back. Without my even realizing it, my foot had almost stepped across the line of chalk. "What are you thinking?"

I didn't have an answer, but I stared at Zia and mumbled in a sort of trance, "She's going to use ribbons. They won't work."

"What?" Carter demanded. "Come on, we've got to go through the gate!"

Just then Zia opened her fist and small red tendrils of cloth fluttered into the air. Ribbons. How had I known? They zipped about like living things—like eels in water—and began to grow larger.

Serqet was still concentrating on the fire, trying to keep Zia from caging her. At first she didn't seem to notice the ribbons, which grew until they were several meters long. I counted five, six, seven of them in all. They zipped around, orbiting Serqet, ripping through her shadow scorpion as if it were a harmless illusion. Finally they wrapped around Serqet's body, pinning her arms and legs. She screamed as if the ribbons burned her. She dropped to her knees, and the shadow scorpion disintegrated into an inky haze.

Zia spun to a stop. She pointed her staff at the goddess's face. The ribbons began to glow, and the goddess hissed in pain, cursing in a language I didn't know.

"I bind you with the Seven Ribbons of Hathor," Zia said. "Release your host or your essence will burn forever."

"Your death will last forever!" Serqet snarled. "You have made an enemy of Set!"

Zia twisted her staff, and Serqet fell sideways, writhing and smoking.

"I will...not..." the goddess hissed. But then her black eyes turned milky white, and she lay still.

"The gate!" Carter warned. "Zia, come on! I think it's closing!"

He was right. The tunnel of sand seemed to be moving a bit more slowly. The tug of its magic did not feel as strong.

Zia approached the fallen goddess. She touched Serqet's forehead, and black smoke billowed from the goddess's mouth. Serqet transformed and shrank until we were looking at a completely different woman wrapped in red ribbons. She had pale skin and black hair, but otherwise she didn't look anything like Serqet. She looked, well, human.

"Who is that?" I asked.

"The host," Zia said. "Some poor mortal who—"

She looked up with a start. The black haze was no longer dissipating. It was getting thicker and darker again, swirling into a more solid form.

"Impossible," Zia said. "The ribbons are too powerful. Serqet can't re-form unless—"

"Well, she is re-forming," Carter yelled, "and our exit is closing! Let's go!"

I couldn't believe he was willing to jump into a churning wall of sand, but as I watched the black cloud take the shape of a two-story-tall scorpion—a very angry scorpion—I made my decision.

"Coming!" I yelled.

"Zia!" Carter yelled. "Now!"

"Perhaps you're right," the magician decided. She turned, and together we ran and plunged straight into the swirling vortex.


	13. Chapter 13

R

**13. I Face the Killer Turkey**

MY TURN.

First of all, Sadie's "puppy dog" comment was totally out of line. I was not starry-eyed about Zia. It's just that I don't meet a lot of people who can throw fireballs and battle gods. [Stop making faces at me, Sadie. You look like Khufu.]

Anyway, we plunged into the sand tunnel.

Everything went dark. My stomach tingled with that top-of-the-roller-coaster weightlessness as I hurtled forward. Hot winds whipped around me, and my skin burned.

Then I tumbled out onto a cold tile floor, and Sadie and Zia crashed on top of me.

"Ow!" I grumbled.

The first thing I noticed was the fine layer of sand covering my body like powdered sugar. Then my eyes adjusted to the harsh light. We were in a big building like a shopping mall, with crowds bustling around us.

No...Not a mall. It was a two-level airport concourse, with shops, lots of windows, and polished steel columns. Outside, it was dark, so I knew we must be in a different time zone. Announcements echoed over the intercom in a language that sounded like Arabic.

Sadie spit sand out of her mouth. "Yuck!"

"Come on," Zia said. "We can't stay here."

I struggled to my feet. People were streaming past—some in Western clothes, some in robes and headscarves. A family arguing in German rushed by and almost ran over me with their suitcases.

Then I turned and saw something I recognized. In the middle of the concourse stood a life-size replica of an Ancient Egyptian boat made from glowing display cases—a sales counter for perfume and jewelry.

"This is the Cairo airport," I said.

"Yes," Zia said. "Now, let's go!"

"Why the rush? Can Serqet...can she follow us through that sand gate?"

Zia shook her head. "An artifact overheats whenever it creates a gate. It requires a twelve-hour cooldown before it can be used again. But we still have to worry about airport security. Unless you'd like to meet the Egyptian police, you'll come with me now."

She grabbed our arms and steered us through the crowd. We must've looked like beggars in our old-fashioned clothes, covered head-to-toe in sand. People gave us a wide berth, but nobody tried to stop us.

"Why are we here?" Sadie demanded.

"To see the ruins of Heliopolis," Zia said.

"Inside an airport?" Sadie asked.

I remembered something Dad had told me years ago, and my scalp tingled.

"Sadie, the ruins are under us." I looked at Zia. "That's right, isn't it?"

She nodded. "The ancient city was pillaged centuries ago. Some of its monuments were carted away, like Cleopatra's two needles. Most of its temples were broken down to make new buildings. What was left disappeared under Cairo's suburbs. The largest section is under this airport."

"And how does that help us?" Sadie asked.

Zia kicked open a maintenance door. On the other side was a broom closet. Zia muttered a command—"Sahad"—and the image of the closet shimmered and disappeared, revealing a set of stone steps leading down.

"Because not all Heliopolis is in ruins," Zia said. "Follow closely. And touch nothing."

The stairs must've led down about seven million miles, because we descended forever. The passage had been made for miniature people, too. We had to crouch and crawl most of the way, and even so, I bonked my head on the ceiling a dozen times. The only light was from a ball of fire in Zia's palm, which made shadows dance across the walls.

I'd been in places like this before—tunnels inside pyramids, tombs my dad had excavated—but I've never liked them. Millions of tons of rock above me seemed to crush the air out of my lungs.

Finally we reached the bottom. The tunnel opened up, and Zia stopped abruptly. After my eyes adjusted, I saw why. We were standing at the edge of a chasm.

A single wooden plank spanned the void. On the opposite ledge, two jackal-headed granite warriors flanked a doorway, their spears crossed over the entrance.

Sadie sighed. "Please, no more psychotic statues."

"Do not joke," Zia warned. "This is an entrance to the First Nome, the oldest branch of the House of Life, headquarters for all magicians. My job was to bring you here safely, but I cannot help you cross. Each magician must unbar the path for herself, and the challenge is different for each supplicant."

She looked at Sadie expectantly, which annoyed me. First Bast, now Zia—both of them treated Sadie like she should have some kind of superpowers. I mean, okay, so she'd been able to blast the library doors apart, but why didn't anyone look at me to do cool tricks?

Plus, I was still annoyed with Sadie for the comments she'd made at the museum in New York—how I had it so good traveling the world with Dad. She had no idea how often I wanted to complain about the constant traveling, how many days I wished I didn't have to get on a plane and could just be like a normal kid going to school and making friends. But I couldn't complain. You always have to look impeccable, Dad had told me. And he didn't just mean my clothes. He meant my attitude. With Mom gone, I was all he had. Dad needed me to be strong. Most days, I didn't mind. I loved my dad. But it was also hard.

Sadie didn't understand that. She had it easy. And now she seemed to be getting all the attention, as if she were the special one. It wasn't fair.

Then I heard Dad's voice in my head: "Fairness means everyone gets what they need. And the only way to get what you need is to make it happen yourself."

I don't know what got into me, but I drew my sword and marched across the plank. It was like my legs were working by themselves, not waiting for my brain. Part of me thought: This is a really bad idea. But part of me answered: No, we do not fear this. And the voice didn't sound like mine.

"Carter!" Sadie cried.

I kept walking. I tried not to look down at the yawning void under my feet, but the sheer size of the chasm made me dizzy. I felt like one of those gyroscope toys, spinning and wobbling as I crossed the narrow plank.

As I got closer to the opposite side, the doorway between the two statues began to glow, like a curtain of red light.

I took a deep breath. Maybe the red light was a portal, like the gate of sand. If I just charged through fast enough...

Then the first dagger shot out of the tunnel.

My sword was in motion before I realized it. The dagger should've impaled me in the chest, but somehow I deflected it with my blade and sent it sailing into the abyss. Two more daggers shot out of the tunnel. I'd never had the best reflexes, but now they sped up. I ducked one dagger and hooked the other with the curved blade of my sword, turned the dagger and flung it back into the tunnel. How the heck did I do that?

I advanced to the end of the plank and slashed through the red light, which flickered and died. I waited for the statues to come alive, but nothing happened. The only sound was a dagger clattering against the rocks in the chasm far below.

The doorway began to glow again. The red light coalesced into a strange form: a five-foot-tall bird with a man's head. I raised my sword, but Zia yelled, "Carter, no!"

The bird creature folded his wings. His eyes, lined with kohl, narrowed as they studied me. A black ornamental wig glistened on his head, and his face was etched with wrinkles. One of those fake braided pharaoh beards was stuck on his chin like a backward ponytail. He didn't look hostile, except for the red flickering light all around him, and the fact that from the neck down he was the world's largest killer turkey.

Then a chilling thought occurred to me: This was a bird with a human head, the same form I'd imagined taking when I slept in Amos's house, when my soul left my body and flew to Phoenix. I had no idea what that meant, but it scared me.

The bird creature scratched at the stone floor. Then, unexpectedly, he smiled.

"Pari, niswa nafeer," he told me, or at least that's what it sounded like.

Zia gasped. She and Sadie were standing behind me now, their faces pale. Apparently they'd managed to cross the chasm without my noticing.

Finally Zia seemed to collect herself. She bowed to the bird creature. Sadie followed her example.

The creature winked at me, as if we'd just shared a joke. Then he vanished. The red light faded. The statues retracted their arms, uncrossing their spears from the entrance.

"That's it?" I asked. "What did the turkey say?"

Zia looked at me with something like fear. "That was not a turkey, Carter. That was a ba."

I'd heard my dad use that word before, but I couldn't place it. "Another monster?"

"A human soul," Zia said. "In this case, a spirit of the dead. A magician from ancient times, come back to serve as a guardian. They watch the entrances of the House."

She studied my face as if I'd just developed some terrible rash.

"What?" I demanded. "Why are you looking at me that way?"

"Nothing," she said. "We must hurry."

She squeezed by me on the ledge and disappeared into the tunnel.

Sadie was staring at me too.

"All right," I said. "What did the bird guy say? You understood it?"

She nodded uneasily. "He mistook you for someone else. He must have bad eyesight."

"Because?"

"Because he said, 'Go forth, good king.'"

I was in a daze after that. We passed through the tunnel and entered a vast underground city of halls and chambers, but I only remember bits and pieces of it.

The ceilings soared to twenty or thirty feet, so it didn't feel like we were underground. Every chamber was lined with massive stone columns like the ones I'd seen in Egyptian ruins, but these were in perfect condition, brightly painted to resemble palm trees, with carved green fronds at the top, so I felt like I was walking through a petrified forest. Fires burned in copper braziers. They didn't seem to make any smoke, but the air smelled good, like a marketplace for spices—cinnamon, clove, nutmeg, and others I couldn't identify. The city smelled like Zia. I realized that this was her home.

We saw a few other people—mostly older men and women. Some wore linen robes, some modern clothes. One guy in a business suit walked past with a black leopard on a leash, as if that were completely normal. Another guy barked orders to a small army of brooms, mops, and buckets that were scuttling around, cleaning up the city.

"Like that cartoon," Sadie said. "Where Mickey Mouse tries to do magic and the brooms keep splitting and toting water."

"'The Sorcerer's Apprentice,'" Zia said. "You do know that was based on an Egyptian story, don't you?"

Sadie just stared back. I knew how she felt. It was too much to process.

We walked through a hall of jackal-headed statues, and I could swear their eyes watched us as we passed. A few minutes later, Zia led us through an open-air market—if you can call anything "open-air" underground—with dozens of stalls selling weird items like boomerang wands, animated clay dolls, parrots, cobras, papyrus scrolls, and hundreds of different glittering amulets.

Next we crossed a path of stones over a dark river teeming with fish. I thought they were perch until I saw their vicious teeth.

"Are those piranhas?" I asked.

"Tiger fish from the Nile," Zia said. "Like piranhas, except these can weigh up to sixteen pounds."

I watched my step more closely after that.

We turned a corner and passed an ornate building carved out of black rock. Seated pharaohs were chiseled into the walls, and the doorway was shaped like a coiled serpent.

"What's in there?" Sadie asked.

We peeked inside and saw rows of children—maybe two dozen in all, about six to ten years old or so—sitting cross-legged on cushions. They were hunched over brass bowls, peering intently into some sort of liquid and speaking under their breath. At first I thought it was a classroom, but there was no sign of a teacher, and the chamber was lit only by a few candles. Judging by the number of empty seats, the room was meant to hold twice as many kids.

"Our initiates," Zia said, "learning to scry. The First Nome must keep in contact with our brethren all over the world. We use our youngest as...operators, I suppose you would say."

"So you've got bases like this all over the world?"

"Most are much smaller, but yes."

I remembered what Amos had told us about the nomes. "Egypt is the First Nome. New York is the Twenty-first. What's the last one, the Three-hundred-and-sixtieth?"

"That would be Antarctica," Zia said. "A punishment assignment. Nothing there but a couple of cold magicians and some magic penguins."

"Magic penguins?"

"Don't ask."

Sadie pointed to the children inside. "How does it work? They see images in the water?"

"It's oil," Zia said. "But yes."

"So few," Sadie said. "Are these the only initiates in the whole city?"

"In the whole world," Zia corrected. "There were more before—" She stopped herself.

"Before what?" I asked.

"Nothing," Zia said darkly. "Initiates do our scrying because young minds are most receptive. Magicians begin training no later than the age of ten...with a few dangerous exceptions."

"You mean us," I said.

She glanced at me apprehensively, and I knew she was still thinking about what the bird spirit had called me: a good king. It seemed so unreal, like our family name in that Blood of the Pharaohs scroll. How could I be related to some ancient kings? And even if I was, I certainly wasn't a king. I had no kingdom. I didn't even have my single suitcase anymore.

"They'll be waiting for you," Zia said. "Come along."

We walked so far, my feet began to ache.

Finally we arrived at a crossroads. On the right was a massive set of bronze doors with fires blazing on either side; on the left, a twenty-foot-tall sphinx carved into the wall. A doorway nestled between its paws, but it was bricked in and covered in cobwebs.

"That looks like the Sphinx at Giza," I said.

"That's because we are directly under the real Sphinx," Zia said. "That tunnel leads straight up to it. Or it used to, before it was sealed."

"But..." I did some quick calculations in my head. "The Sphinx is, like, twenty miles from the Cairo Airport."

"Roughly."

"No way we've walked that far."

Zia actually smiled, and I couldn't help noticing how pretty her eyes were. "Distance changes in magic places, Carter. Surely you've learned that by now."

Sadie cleared her throat. "So why is the tunnel closed, then?"

"The Sphinx was too popular with archaeologists," Zia said. "They kept digging around. Finally, in the 1980s, they discovered the first part of the tunnel under the Sphinx."

"Dad told me about that!" I said. "But he said the tunnel was a dead end."

"It was when we got through with it. We couldn't let the archaeologists know how much they're missing. Egypt's leading archaeologist recently speculated that they've only discovered thirty percent of the ancient ruins in Egypt. In truth, they've only discovered one tenth, and not even the interesting tenth."

"What about King Tut's tomb?" I protested.

"That boy king?" Zia rolled her eyes. "Boring. You should see some of the good tombs."

I felt a little hurt. Dad had named me after Howard Carter, the guy who discovered King Tut's tomb, so I'd always felt a personal attachment to it. If that wasn't a "good" tomb, I wondered what was.

Zia turned to face the bronze doors.

"This is the Hall of Ages." She placed her palm against the seal, which bore the symbol of the House of Life.

The hieroglyphs began to glow, and the doors swung open.

Zia turned to us, her expression deadly serious. "You are about to meet the Chief Lector. Behave yourselves, unless you wish to be turned into insects."


End file.
